Coaching practices for How Specific Should a Plan Be
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For How Specific Should a Plan Be, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- In my head my plan feels totally clear, but every time I go to actually do it I realize I never decided the details and it falls apart
- My whole plan is a chain where every link has to hold
- I made a plan a while back, my life has shifted since, and I keep failing the same plan over and over without ever sitting down to actually update it to fit how things are now.
- My plan only works if a whole chain of things all go right
- My plans hold up fine until something throws them off
Practices that may help
- Test your action plan for specificity before relying on it
Before counting on a plan, check that a stranger could execute it from your written description — if not, it is not specific enough.
Action Planning - Design decisions so they work even if some things go wrong
Ask: does this plan require everything to go right? If so, redesign it.
Margin of Safety - Review and update action plans at a fixed weekly cadence
An action plan that is not reviewed weekly becomes stale — regular review keeps the plan matched to current reality.
Action Planning - Audit plans for scenario inflation
Before committing to a plan that depends on multiple things going right, count the dependencies.
The Conjunction Fallacy — When "More Details" Feels More Likely - Plan for obstacles with coping plans
Anticipate the specific obstacles most likely to block your plan and pre-decide your response to each.
Action Planning - Separate the planning session from the execution day
Do your planning in a dedicated session, never on the day you intend to start.
The Planning Fallacy — Why Your Estimates Are Always Wrong - Write when, where, and how plans for every behavioral goal
Specify exactly when, where, and how you will act — not just what you intend to do.
Action Planning - Pre-identify your temptations before writing the contract
Knowing specifically when and how you’ll be tempted lets you write a contract that covers those scenarios.
Commitment Contracts, Made Practical - Name the assumptions that must hold for the plan to work
Every plan rests on assumptions — list them and ask how likely each one is.
Margin of Safety - Make stretch goals specific, not just big
A stretch goal must be specific and measurable to trigger the mechanisms that make it work.
Stretch Goals: When Ambitious Targets Help and When They Backfire
Related concerns
- Action Planning Confidence
Action planning — specifying when, where, and how you will execute a goal-directed behavior — is one of the best-supported techniques for closing the intention-behavior gap. Orbell and Sheeran’s research, along with Peter Gollwitzer’s work on implementation intentions, shows that forming specific plans reliably increases behavior over vague intentions alone, with meta-analytic effect sizes in the small-to-medium range.
- Action Planning When Starting Out
Action planning — specifying when, where, and how you will execute a goal-directed behavior — is one of the best-supported techniques for closing the intention-behavior gap. Orbell and Sheeran’s research, along with Peter Gollwitzer’s work on implementation intentions, shows that forming specific plans reliably increases behavior over vague intentions alone, with meta-analytic effect sizes in the small-to-medium range.
- Action Planning With Friends
Action planning — specifying when, where, and how you will execute a goal-directed behavior — is one of the best-supported techniques for closing the intention-behavior gap. Orbell and Sheeran’s research, along with Peter Gollwitzer’s work on implementation intentions, shows that forming specific plans reliably increases behavior over vague intentions alone, with meta-analytic effect sizes in the small-to-medium range.
- Compound Probability Plans
Before committing to a plan that depends on multiple things going right, count the dependencies.
Audit plans for scenario inflation
- Contingency Planning Goals
Anticipate the specific obstacles most likely to block your plan and pre-decide your response to each.
Plan for obstacles with coping plans
- Plan A Vs Plan B Greene
Anticipate the specific obstacles most likely to block your plan and pre-decide your response to each.
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