This insight was very annoying, because it went against my conviction that written goals are very important.

It seemed that a clearly written definition of done, about the length of a single paragraph, greatly increased my productivity, but as soon as I did more planning than that, productivity went downhill.

I was perplexed about this for months until a therapist friend of mine mentioned that there are studies which imply that people who talk a lot about their goals are less likely to actually achieve them. The reason for this is that you can get so many of the benefits of finishing a project by just talking about it. Your friends will encourage and recognize your endeavor, and your imagination will make it feel like you are actually working on it, and maybe even finished the project.

Planning seems to work the same way for me. By planning the project, it feels like I’m making progress on it, and the more elaborate my plan, the more real it feels. Just by planning, I would get much of the satisfaction that actually finishing the project would give.

So be careful about planning — plan so that your next few steps become clear, no more, and don’t show your plans to too many people. Instead, try to ship as fast as possible and get into the habit of getting feedback on things that you’re really delivering.

Photo by Daniel Go.