There are dreamers and there are planners; the planners make their dreams come true.
- Edwin Louis Cole
In our modern era where productivity is key, planning seems to have become very trendy in the past years. Bullet-point journaling, to-do lists, journals, diaries, planners… call it what you want, all of those are part of most success stories. Go to any bookshop, in the section “health & lifestyle”, “career & achievement”, “personal development” or even “self-help”, I’m pretty sure half the books you’ll find will be about planning your life efficiently. It won’t say that on the front cover, it is not the most appealing title, but in most of those self-help books will be a section on how to make time for yourself, plan your day, or be more efficient in what you do. And they are onto something.
Some recent research has looked at what make people more successful at turning their dreams and goals into achievements. More specifically, studies have looked at planfulness, an aspect of our personality referring to our ability to make plans and stick to it. It is also linked to a “goal-promoting” sort of way of thinking. People with a high level of planfulness, for example, are better at long-term planning and decision-making helping to transform a goal into reality. Having the ability to juggle between short-term goals (like going through our daily life or being on time at work) and long-term goal (being healthier or changing a routine) seems to contribute to goal progression.
Planfulness seems to be constituted of 3 attributes: temporal orientation, mental flexibility, and cognitive strategies. Let’s see what they are. Temporal orientation is the ability to understand the implications of our present actions and behaviours and how they will impact our future. It can be the ability of making sacrifices now for long-term benefits, such as refusing a slice of chocolate cake to lose weight in the long-run. Mental flexibility reflects how we go from abstract goals to present actions, or the steps to take to achieve this goal. When we have an aim in life, it is often useful to break it down into smaller, easily reachable (and realistic!) steps that contribute to reaching this final aim; mental flexibility is the ability to list those intermediate steps and identifying when you need help. Finally, cognitive strategies are tactics to stay on track and anticipate potential obstacles, reflecting the capacity to adapt to the reality while working towards the final goal.
And it turns out that planfulness might also explain how often you go to the gym! A “real-world” study recently investigated the link between planfulness and actual behaviour: hitting the gym, stepping away from theoretical methodology to observe real world behaviours. The researchers followed 282 people over 20 weeks, collecting general information regarding their personalities, their level of planfulness, their health-goal (i.e., what they wanted out of using the gym), but also recorded how many times each person swiped into the gym. What did they found? A difference of 1 point in the planfulness scores (going from 1 to 5) had impressive effect on the number of time people went to the gym: a 1-point increase was reflected by 8.5 more visits to the gym! I think it’s a rather impressive number.
The research team recognised that more remains to be done to further understand the key-role of planfulness in implementing goal-directed behaviours. It would be interesting to know whether the relationship remains true regardless of the goal (running, lifting weight, losing weight…) or if it is goal-dependent. Is a higher level of planfulness required for losing weight than for running a marathon? Is it transferrable to other goals, like changing diets or quitting an addiction? Those are questions for future research…
Right now, I think it is worth knowing that our level of planfulness is not fully set in stone (and not just for gym/health goals). There are some natural, inherent, differences between individuals, just like there are variations in how we look. However, we can change the way we think about goals and our planfulness score over time. It ain’t easy, but it is doable. Grab a pen and a piece of paper (the type of piece of paper you won’t lose instantly) and scribble down goals you’d like to reach. “Being happy” is not a goal, it’s a way of life, so be more specific: what would make you happy? What do you desire? What do you need to do in your work/at home? Doesn’t need to be fancy, but apparently pen and paper is better than electronic lists (that’s another story though). Once you wrote your goals down, try and think of small steps to reach your goals. Start small, get use to making lists and following them (simply making the list won’t do it). Make it a habit. As one said, “an hour of planning can save you 10 hours of doing” (Dale Carnegie).
Happy to-do listing!
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