Planning is overrated. The best performers seesaw between ideas and actions.

As usual, life is not black and white, it is grey. The best performance can be obtained by:<p>Idea(s) Plan(s) Action(s)<p>Of course, the trick is to know when to switch from one to the other. Generally, I like to take an idea (or ideas) and think about them for a while. When I feel vaguely comfortable that there are no obvious roadblocks, start planning. When I'm vaguely comfortable there are no subtle roadblocks, it's time for action. If you hit a roadblock, it's back to the ideas phase.<p>This strategy keeps you moving forward, bring fresh information quickly, and avoids most roadblocks before they waste any time.<p>Depending on the scope of the idea, the planning could be anywhere from minutes to days. Scope and complexity also change whether the planning happens purely in my head, or requires some typing to get everything clear.<p>Luckily, life usually gives us ideas while we're working on something else, so there's time to think about an idea for a while before you even have time to take action, which gives some planning time.

<i>The problem I had was that Clinton's principal associate is Ira Magaziner, the same "intellectual" who was the schemer-in-chief behind "Hillary care" in 1993.</i><p>The problem I have is that Tom Peters is the same "intellectual" who continues to say less with more words that any other "business guru" on the lecture circuit.<p>Funny how often over the years he has been wrong with his McKinsey-like advice while the world changed under his feet.<p>Funnier is that the guy who skims the surface of everything, never digging down below one level is telling us hackers to act without realizing that this is one audience you can't bullshit.<p>Examples of Peters' charlatanism are everywhere. Just a few:<p><a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/53/peters.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/53/peters.html</a><p><a href="http://www.sathnam.com/Features/31/tom-peters" rel="nofollow">http://www.sathnam.com/Features/31/tom-peters</a><p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Witch-Doctors-Making-Sense-Management/dp/0812929888/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&#38;s=books&#38;qid=1284909029&#38;sr=8-1" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Witch-Doctors-Making-Sense-Management/...</a>

"In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable." Eisenhower - one of my favourite quotes that sums this up well.

This is a fecund article as evidenced by the excellent comments here it has sparked.<p>My half-serious takeaways are: Peters mistakes overplanning and over-complexifying for systems thinking.<p>Some things really are complex. They stretch the boundaries of Einstein's idea that things should be as simple as possible but no simpler.<p>Anyone who thinks rapid prototyping is "play" hasn't been in a high-intensity production environment.<p>Peters is a popularizer but he sure can get the mental blood flowing.<p>You can't define a minimum viable product with which to start prototyping without some good planning/thought.<p>Perhaps to belabor the analogy, part of getting ready to fire is some amount of aiming.<p>The rap (deserved or not) on Microsoft is that it does the worst of both overplanning and then releasing products (prototypes?) that the customers have to "test". Slow-prototyping?<p>I like Bloomberg's quote, "We act from day one..."<p>The oil hunting analogy shows Peters' basic idea flaw because in order to drill test wells you have to read maps and study. Plus lack of planning can get very expensive in that field.<p>Was it Beckett who said, "Fail better." Even that requires planning along with the experience.<p>Attributing the loss of the House to "Hillary care" is solidly in the "dumb-simplifier" category.<p>Good enough depends on very intelligent implementation and feedback. Going off half-cocked is fine if the foreplay is effective. :-)<p>There is a difference in writing in which all your rapid prototyping is done in your drafts than in putting out an under-developed product. Although there are some experiments with crowd-sourcing writing too.<p>I liked this submariner catch-phrase, "Water in the people tank."<p>One comment said: Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." John Lennon My thought was, "So is death."<p>Ah lazy Sunday mornings.

Planning for planning's sake is not the same as planning to act. Big organizations typically fail to see the difference because the price of failure is too high for them compared to smaller, more nimble orgs.

The fact that many "performers" are somewhat unfocused doesn't mean that planning is overrated. These people would likely do even better with a little more discipline.<p>It just that big successes more often come from people with lots of ideas and lots of experimentation as opposed to people who pick relatively unambitious careers and rotely execute day after day.

I don't understand where systems thinking comes in to this. Because anybody who has thought at all about systems will realise they the are complex and hard to predict (because we can't know everything about the system), and therefore that the way forward is to make small changes and see how the system reacts to them... which seems to be exactly what Peters is advocating.<p>I don't know how the term is used in management consulting circles. Perhaps "systems thinking" has nothing to do with either systems or thinking, and it's just the latest buzzword that management consultants use to carry on selling what they always have. But if that were true, it would surely say more about management consulting than about systems thinking.

GTD tip - don't make it (GTD) a hobby.

Too much planning can certainly backfire, hence this article: When planning becomes a crutch - the woes of reaction and inaction: <a href="http://dontgetburnedblog.com/planning-becomes-a-crutch/" rel="nofollow">http://dontgetburnedblog.com/planning-becomes-a-crutch/</a>

There is no specific question or thesis here about which to form an opinion. Is he saying that planning is bad? Always? What kind of planning? It's all vague platitudes.

In other words:<p><pre><code> Exploration &#62; Planning </code></pre> This makes sense in any area where one is blazing new territory.

It's a miracle. A three-way seesaw between ideas, actions and planning.

Such a bold headline.. ^_^<p>Everyone who at least once tried to participate in a mountain expedition should know that planing is useless. Everything is changing each half of hour, and what you do is adapting and correcting your assumptions on the go.<p>Of course you need some preparation, like getting warm clothes and stuff, but what would you actually wear you will know only right before the moment you're leaving the camp.<p>And of course, you never know when. ^_^