Coaching practices for Why Before How Planning
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Why Before How Planning, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I tend to figure out my plan the same morning I’m supposed to start, in a rush to just get going
- I’m about to lock in a plan that feels airtight from the inside
- My plans hold up fine until something throws them off
- I’m about to commit to this plan and on paper it looks solid, but a quiet part of me suspects I’m too sold on it to see the holes
- I’m all in on this plan and the success story in my head is so vivid I can already taste it
Practices that may help
- 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 - Invoke the outside view before committing to any significant plan
Before finalizing a plan or forecast, ask "How did similar things go?" as the first checkpoint.
The Outside View - 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 - The premortem (imagine the project already failed)
Before starting, assume the plan has already failed and ask why — then fix it now.
Premeditatio Malorum, in Depth - Run a pre-mortem to interrupt forward narrative construction
Before committing to a plan, imagine it failed completely — then generate the most plausible story of why.
The Narrative Fallacy: Why We Can’t Stop Making Stories - Run a premortem before committing
Imagine the project has already failed and work backwards to find why.
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 - If–Then Planning, Made Practical
If–then plans (also called implementation intentions) specify in advance how you will respond to the specific situations that typically derail your goals: "If situation X occurs, then I will do Y." A meta-analysis of 94 studies found a medium-to-large effect on goal attainment — one of the most reliable single techniques in goal-setting research. - Run a pre-mortem before committing to a plan
Imagine the plan has already failed and ask what went wrong.
Confirmation Bias: Seeing What You Expect to See - Action Planning
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.
Related concerns
- If Then Planning When Starting Out
If–then plans (also called implementation intentions) specify in advance how you will respond to the specific situations that typically derail your goals: "If situation X occurs, then I will do Y." A meta-analysis of 94 studies found a medium-to-large effect on goal attainment — one of the most reliable single techniques in goal-setting research.
- Backward Planning Technique
Imagine the project has already failed and work backwards to find why.
Run a premortem before committing
- Effectuation Planning
Specify exactly when, where, and how you will act — not just what you intend to do.
Write when, where, and how plans for every behavioral goal
- How To Learn From Planning
Before, during, and after a task, ask what you will do, how it is going, and what to change.
Run a plan-monitor-evaluate loop
- If Then Planning During A Big Change
If–then plans (also called implementation intentions) specify in advance how you will respond to the specific situations that typically derail your goals: "If situation X occurs, then I will do Y." A meta-analysis of 94 studies found a medium-to-large effect on goal attainment — one of the most reliable single techniques in goal-setting research.
- If Then Planning In A New Job
If–then plans (also called implementation intentions) specify in advance how you will respond to the specific situations that typically derail your goals: "If situation X occurs, then I will do Y." A meta-analysis of 94 studies found a medium-to-large effect on goal attainment — one of the most reliable single techniques in goal-setting research.
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