This article originally appeared in The Simplifier #41.

Planning Your Own Personal Masterpieces

By Shawn Tuttle

This article is part of a series on the 5 Core Concepts. We’ve covered creating meaningful goals, visualizing & clearing obstacles. Next up: planning…

Nature has done an outstanding job designing magnificent trees. They can grow in the most unlikely places, reach outstanding heights, and sway in the mightiest winds without breaking. A single mature tree may have hundreds of branches, thousands of leaves, and miles of roots—all in perfect proportion for the survival of that tree. Considering the sheer number of parts of the tree, this could seem a daunting task! But the tree inherently follows a process that creates each individual part, and each of these parts fit together to form the tree. What seems complex and grand is really just an ordered collection of smaller, simpler parts and processes.

It’s quite similar to creating, say, a five-course meal. Ingredients, utensils, pots and pans are combined in a step-by-step process that results in a variety of (hopefully!) delicious dishes. And it all starts with the vision of a delicious dinner…

Now say your meaningful goal is a little more complex than a dinner. For example, you want to write your first book, or some equally-big goal tied to your hopes and dreams. The vision would be you as a published and successful author. Now how to cook up that vision? Time to start planning!

The goal of planning is clarity. Planning is identifying the various parts of your vision and breaking them down into doable actions. Those actions performed in a certain order allows you to create masterpieces—whether they be grandiose meals or a finished book!

Here are the main parts of the planning process:

-Take stock of resources
Examples: my friend Joe is a published author, I’m getting an ezine for first time authors, my friend Mary is a writing coach and editor
The resources that you identify here may or may not be ones you end up utilizing. You may go to a certain website for cooking techniques and instead end up finding a great recipe. The point is that we often need assistance, education, coaching, and camaraderie through the hard or unfamiliar segments of the journey. Taking stock of your resources helps you identify who (or what) might serve in these capacities.

-Ask questions
Examples: Should I get an agent? Should I self-publish? How long should the book be? Who is my target audience? What’s in the way* of my achieving this?
Who, what, where, why, when… there will be a lot of questions along the way! Questions help clarify and focus your efforts, so keep asking them. It’s amazing how you become aware of magazine articles, websites, and conversations that “just happen” to help answer your questions.

-Identify sub-projects
Examples: research topic, outline book, interview experts, find publishers
This is a crucial step for turning mountains into mere pebbles. “A five course meal” can be a daunting venture. “One appetizer, one soup, one vegetable dish, one meat dish, and one dessert” is much more manageable. These are your sub-projects. You’ll break each of these down even further.

-Identify actions (and minor sub-projects)
Examples: call Mary the writing coach, block off daily writing times in schedule, create timeline to follow
Keep breaking the sub-projects into smaller and smaller parts and/or questions until you arrive at an action to take. If an action will take several steps to accomplish, it’s actually another sub-project. As long as the end result elicits a “no problem” response from you, consider it ready for your ToDo list.

-Organize the information
Examples.: notes from interviews, potential publishers, the outline
Get your thoughts organized. You wouldn’t try to create a five- course meal based on recipes written on dozens of scattered Post-it notes. Nor can you always rely on your memory to store all the details involved in a complex project. Organized information gives your brain logical steps to follow, and gives it an opportunity to see what’s missing.
Ideas for organizing info:

• Try a binder with dividers for each major sub-project and for resources. The benefit of a binder is that all the info is contained in one place and it’s easy to take with you. Plus, adding a visual representation of your goal to the front of the binder continually reminds you of what you’re doing all this work for.
  Disadvantages: you take the whole binder with you even if you only want one section. Also, inserting papers the 3-hole punch process.
• Creating a file for each major sub-project has the advantage of being easier to drop in papers plus you can take one file with you if that’s the only one you are working on.
  Disadvantages: they get separated more easily and it’s easier to misplace files than a binder.

-Assign timeframes
Examples: complete research by April, finish first draft by June, send second draft to editor by early August
It’s been said that a goal is merely a dream with a timeframe. And it just so happens that deadlines are very convincing for motivating action. Some sub-projects will take more time than others, get a sense for how they all can work together at the right time. Decide on recipes by Tuesday, get shopping done by Friday, prepare meal on Saturday. The meal is on behalf of a friend moving in August, set dinner date for end of July.

Remember: the goal of planning is clarity. Identifying sub-projects and resources, assigning timeframes, and then organizing your incoming information within a structure transforms your project from an amorphous jumble into your emerging vision. Once the focused action items have guided your sub-projects to completion, you can add the finishing touches of candlelight and fine china to complete your masterpiece!

—

Shawn Tuttle is founder of Project Simplify.

*You may want to reference “Clearing Your Way to a Brighter Flame” for more on clearing obstacles.