It’s hot, have you made your plans for 2024?

It's the beginning of another year, and it's time for everyone to make an annual summary and plan. But some people's plans are always criticized by their leaders. So how should they write them? The author summarizes a formula: do XX within XX time, and achieve XX results. Let's see how to understand it.

2024 is fresh and hot, and 17 days have passed without me noticing. When I finished the year-end review at the end of last year, I always wanted to write another article about planning. When the movie "Hot and Hot" was officially announced, the planning dry goods that should have been fresh and hot also cooled down. I remembered that the dish of "planning" should still be served, because it can relieve some people's "hunger".

Fortunately, there is still a little warmth left, and it is not too late to make plans for the new year before the Lunar New Year.

1. What is planning?

Luo Pang said in his 2023 Friends New Year's Eve speech: "He is still willing to do things like Civilization that have a long span. Make big wishes, take small steps, walk a long way, kowtow, and don't stop. Of course, there is no need to rush at all."

Luo Pang has extended his plans and wishes to a long enough time dimension, and he can even predict what he will do one day decades later. This is the power of planning.

In the new year of 2024, can you plan what you want to do in the next year? Many friends confidently said: "Of course I can, isn't it just planning what I want to do? It's easy."

Earn 1 million

Promoted to management

Go travel around the world

Achieve work-life balance

Live the way you like

…

But is the above plan really a plan? There is no time period, no quantitative indicators, no quality assessment standards...

What is planning? Planning is a series of plans and action steps formulated over a period of time to achieve a specific goal. It can be seen that the key elements of planning are time frame, goal, plan and action.

Therefore, the "plan" mentioned above can only be regarded as a wish, and the annual plan is used as a tool for making wishes. In fact, there is a huge gap between wishes and plans.

2. How to implement the plan?

Since the key elements of planning are time frame, goals, plans and actions, if you want the annual plan to be implemented and completed in a rhythmic manner, you must set your own annual goals, plans and actions.

1. Objectives

The goal refers to the actual effect that you ultimately want to achieve in a thing. It must conform to the objective development laws of things, and you should never try to be as good as an elephant.

For example, if your current annual salary is only 300,000 yuan, it is unrealistic to hope that your annual salary can increase to 1 million yuan in one year. (Unless you win the lottery, it is unlikely that such an extreme salary increase will occur in the workplace.) There are three key steps in the process of setting goals:

First, you need to recognize your current situation. Knowing the reasonable gap between your current situation and your goal can help you better develop a feasible plan based on results. If you don’t set goals based on actual conditions, you are likely to overestimate or underestimate yourself, which will ultimately lead to a large deviation in results.

For example, many people like to compare themselves with people of the same age. They like to compare themselves with people of the same age, such as how much they earn at the age of 35, whether they have a house or a car, and if they do not reach the same level as people of the same age at the age of 35, they will think that they are a failure.

In fact, it is totally unnecessary. Because everyone has a different life path, different cognition, different resources, and different backing, these variables will affect the achievement of the goal results. It is unreasonable and unhealthy to completely regard other people's life results as your own standard of struggle.

To take a step back, some people are already company CEOs or department directors at the age of 35. These positions are scarce. Do you still want to hold yourself to the same goal at this time?

Secondly, find your own role model. What is the life you aspire to live, who is the person you aspire to be, who is your role model? Find your own role model, fully analyze the SWOT situation between you and your role model, and then find the right goal direction for yourself. Use your strengths to push resources to the greatest extent to achieve your goals.

Finally, determine the rationality of the path. A goal can be broken down into hundreds or thousands of paths to achieve it. Some paths can lead to the goal exit, while some paths end in a dead end. You need to sort out a correct path map and follow the map to reach the destination of success.

2. Plan

The plan is the actual things to be done, which requires you to calculate and divide the things. For example, a task must be completed by what time node, and how much manpower, material resources and financial resources are needed.

Annual planning requires you to implement specific details such as time, resources, project completion, etc. for each plan.

For example, taking parents to travel to five provinces before June 1, 2024 is a clear goal. But whether to travel once a month or all at once, which provinces to visit first and which to visit later, and whether there are relatives and friends in each place who need to reminisce, all involve specific plans and time arrangements.

During the planning process, we need to consider the three elements of time, scope and cost for each project, and use project management thinking to reasonably control the progress to achieve the final delivery of the project.

3. Action Items

Action items are the breakdown of the goals with the finest granularity. Taking "Take parents on a tour of five provinces" as an example, the action items can be broken down into four dimensions: clothing, food, housing, and transportation. The cost control and time scheduling of each dimension are all action items that need to be refined.

As shown in the figure below, this is a simplified action plan for parents' travel. The key elements include time, place, tasks, expenses, events, etc. Even people who have not participated in the planning will know what to do on the day by taking a look at the action list.

In fact, the logic and steps of annual planning seem simple, but in actual operation we often make the mistake of "making big wishes". So what should we do?

Let me make a planning formula for you. Planning = within xx time + what to do + what effect to achieve (the effect can be quantified. For non-quantifiable content, quality standards or scoring standards should be given.)

The fresh and hot 2024 has begun, so hurry up and make a brilliant annual plan for yourself.

Author: Kaka; WeChat public account: Kaka's Product Notes