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And, so often, we plan as if every day will be our best day. We plan as if we’re the non-procrastinating, energy-filled, mind-like-a-steel-trap people we want to be, and when the time comes, it turns out that we’re just our normal, well-intentioned but fallible selves.
Despite a common belief in the power of optimism, I and other psychologists have shown, through decades of research, that, for some people and some situations, more pessimistic approaches are effective.
Defensive pessimism is a strategy that involves assuming that things will go wrong (that’s the pessimism part) and thinking through what might go wrong in concrete and specific detail (that’s the defensive part).
So, start with the abstract goal, and think of that as your ultimate destination. Then, plan your trip to that destination. What supplies, preparations and action steps are necessary to get you there? Each answer to that question becomes a subgoal on the way to your final goal.
The more specific and concrete your goals are, the easier planning for those goals tends to be. As a bonus, smaller steps taken repeatedly are also more likely to become habits – and once that happens, we no longer have to plan, we just do.
This approach can also help you leverage what psychologists call the ‘Ovsiankina effect’, named for the Russian-born psychologist who studied the troublesome feeling people have when they start something but don’t finish it.
Creating a written ‘map’ of each step makes them even more concrete, and it can help you anticipate potential obstacles. It also offloads the cognitive effort of continually trying to remember your steps along the way.
Though some people find it tedious to write out plans, I think the benefits tend to outweigh the costs. Nevertheless, there are potential pitfalls. If you develop a plan so elaborate that it takes a lot of effort to maintain, you may feel overwhelmed. It is important to remain flexible.
A well-studied tendency that hampers effective planning is called the ‘planning fallacy’. This is a general tendency to underestimate the time and effort it will take to do what we are planning to do.
Research suggests that most of us, most of the time, will be overly optimistic about what it will take – and, especially, how long it will take – to follow the steps of a plan.
Here again, planning small, specific steps can be useful, because you may become aware that you are falling behind while you’re still early in the process and have time to make course corrections.
The more important your goal is, the more you should consider having backup plans – variations that you can pivot to if one or more key steps can’t be carried out.
The most effective plans take into account our own strengths and weaknesses, personality traits, likes and dislikes, resources and interests. If your plan requires time that you haven’t set aside, calls for skills you haven’t acquired yet or conflicts with other goals that you’re pursuing at the same time, it is unlikely to survive the first obstacle you encounter.