Continuous Learning

*This is the 6th and last article in the New Year’s Resolutions series*

The last challenge you need to overcome in achieving your New Year’s resolutions is to ensure that you know how to create a plan for tasks that you do not know how to do well - yet.

You might wonder - how is that different from the regular project planning? Don’t we all create plans that contain a set of tasks and manage them toward a particular outcome by a particular date?

Regular project planning process is suited for tasks that you know how to do well, because regular planning process is optimized for achieving a particular outcome within constraints of budget and schedule. When you are skilled at a set of tasks, you can create an effective plan using regular project planning method, because you know how to get things done within the budget and schedule constraints. The same plan, if given to someone else who lacks the necessary skills, he/she will not be able to meet the same constraints. Thus regular project planning is not effective for people who do not know what they are doing.

Now - it can be difficult for all of us to see or admit that we do not know what we are doing for goals. After all, some goals seem extremely simple, as simple as, say, watch less TV, exercise more, or spend more time with your family. After all, how difficult can it be? We just need to turn off the remote, go to gym more often, and make sure that we come home earlier right? Of course we all know how successful we are doing just that

Changing these habits also require you to change how you associate a particular feelings with them. For example, you watch TV because you are bored and need entertainment; hence TV provides a positive feeling for you. Without finding a substitute to give you at least equal amount of entertainment (or that you find ways to reduce your dependency on external entertainment), Keep reading →