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), you will have difficult time to power off your TV set. Also, you might want to spend more time with your family, but whenever you do so you found yourself quarreling, and that does not feel good, which subconsciously drive you away from your family. Without tackling the source of quarreling, you will have difficulty to find spending time with your family is quality time.

These examples mean to highlight that even something as simple as stop watching TV or spend more time with family is not as straightforward as it seems, and it is no surprise that we cannot plan effectively when we do not know things work. Like it or not, before we can execute well, we have to learn how to execute well.

We need a plan for learning, not a plan for executing.

Instead of getting into the mode of Ready, Aim, Fire, we need to get into the mode of Ready, Fire, Aim.

Instead of coming up with a plan that optimizes for getting a particular result within the constraints of budget and schedule, we need to come up with a plan that optimizes for providing regular and frequent feedback for us to learn and adjust to get to a plan we can execute well.

In the traditional project management triangle of budget, schedule, and scope, one can control up to two levers but must let the third align naturally. If we fix budget and schedule, we cannot dictate the scope. If we fix budget and scope, then we cannot dictate schedule.

In planning to learn, we can only control one lever - the desired outcome, and must let the other two align naturally. This does not mean we will not be fiscally responsible or that we will take longer than we should to get things done. What it means is that we acknowledge that we do not know just how much and how long it would take, and our priority is to learn, and we can expect to make mistakes as part of the learning process.

Of courses, such prospect does not jive well with most of us. We are so used to getting things done, and getting things done right, the first time. How can we contemplate failure? The trouble with such thinking is that it plants the seed of true failure.

These days we have very little tolerance for wastes. We want to get results and we want to get results now. If we do not see a diet working for us right away, we will switch to a different diet plan. We seek instant feedbacks.

When we combine the desire for instant feedbacks and regular project planning, we faultily believe we will get results by our plan, and when we naturally fail to get the desired results, we get frustrated and become disappointed, without realizing the actual reason is because we do not know what we are doing. Some learn to learn, some give up, and the rest of us will have to have the same resolution for next year.

So how can we plan to learn, and yet satisfy our need for instant feedback (better yet, gratification), at the same time build the needed persistence?

It turns out that if we satisfy one, we can satisfy all.

When one plans to learn, one plans in incremental steps. With each step taken, one receives the necessary feedback to determine whether or not we are doing the right thing. If we are not, we will adjust, but if we are, we will continue to do the same thing, until we learn differently. In such approach we get instant feedbacks, and if we do it right, we give ourselves instant gratifications. With each gratification we will give ourselves a positive reinforcement, and positive reinforcement increases our self confidence, which gives us the necessary reserve to persist through difficult times.

To mimic the above approach, we create a roadmap. Different from an execution plan, the roadmap is sparse in details. All it contains is a series of goals, generally called milestones. In our roadmap of learning, we differ from regular roadmap by not including the dates, because we cannot fix schedule when we are learning. If you are really compelled to put dates down, go ahead, you will change the dates again anyways. Given you do not know what you are doing yet, expect your first roadmap to be full of holes. Just put down a series of milestones that you think you need to achieve on the road to accomplish the end goal. Look through the list of milestones, and pick a logical first milestone that you should accomplish. It could be an obvious choice because everything else seem to depend on this first milestone, but it might not be, and that is okay, pick your best guess - you are trying to start somewhere. Another property you look for in your first milestone is that it should be pretty easy to do. Remember, you are learning, so even an easy goal can be difficult to accomplish.

For this first milestone, go ahead and create your regular execution plan - feel free to pick dates. Don’t worry about any details for the rest of the milestones. Now, go get the first milestone done. If you pick a right milestone, you should get things done relatively painlessly, but if you pick a wrong one, then you will likely get some valuable lessons. In either case, review the progress frequently (say, weekly), and in the latter case, you might contemplate adjusting your first milestone so you can accomplish things easier. The goal is to accomplish something so you can gain the positive reinforcement.

Once you’ve accomplished the first goal, review your roadmap. Readjust your roadmap as necessary - you will have learned some lessons that can be incorporated into the roadmap. Pick a second goal, using the same criteria, and repeat the process described in the last paragraph. Your learning will also be reflected in your execution plan, and you will likely gain some efficiency and productivity. You will also have better confidence from the positive reinforcement. Repeat this process for the rest of your roadmaps until you achieve your ultimate goal. By then you should have a very good understanding on how to achieve this goal. And if you need to optimize the results (i.e. increasing the results by 2x, so to speak), you will have a good plan that you can execute.

Now you know how to plan for things you do not know about, and you have all the necessary tools to achieve your New Year’s resolutions. Your last homework assignment is, of course, to come up with the roadmaps for your resolutions, to come up with first milestones for the roadmaps, and to start executing toward reaching your goals!

New Year’s Resolutions Series

1. Secrets to Successful New Year’s Resolution - Intro
2. New Year’s Resolution II - The Intuitive but Incomplete Approach
3. 3 Reasons Why Your New Year’s Resolutions Fail Even If You Are Good Project Managers
4. Finding Your Truly Important New Year’s Resolutions
5. How to Find Time for Your New Year’s Resolutions in Your Busy Life
6. Effective Planning for Your New Year’s Resolutions