A good plan goes a long way

Today’s technique of making a plan before we work has benefits that are not obvious but make it a small strategy with a big impact! Here’s why ….

Making a really good plan is a high performance technique

Planning ahead can ensure that when we actually sit down to work, we are ready and prepared. Making a plan before we work can really help us to think through what we need to do and to get ready for this work. It can help us to break the activity into smaller pieces and allows us to focus much more easily.

Making a plan before we work engages our brain 

In making a plan, our mind starts to prepare itself ahead of the work we are going to carry out. By making a plan we bring this work to our mind. This helps our mind to get ready unconsciously, before we even sit down to begin. We are therefore at an advantage when we do begin to work. This is especially helpful if our plan involves revision, recall and memory. Our unconscious mind will already have started to collect and connect information ahead of the work. It will be working hard before we even start to recall and revise. This saves so much time and makes the whole process easier.

Making a plan before we work is reduces procrastination

We often procrastinate because the work ahead of us feels too big or too unknown and scary!

We can break this cycle by deciding to sit down and make a plan first before we work. This is a very reassuring thing to do! We know that we are not going to be working – but we will only be planning! We might even decide that making a big plan is also too scary – so we can make a small plan just for the next piece of work. that we are going to do.

Sitting down and writing a plan helps us to start to think and to ‘get our head around’ the work ahed of us. Before we know it, we are in work mode – sitting, thinking and writing. Starting with a plan doesn’t really feel like work, it feels like an activity before work. Because of this we aren’t so resistant.

Writing a plan can help us to make that leap between avoiding work and actually doing it. Sometimes me move from planning into working without even noticing! Perfect!

Having a plan before we work breaks the job down into manageable pieces

Sometimes an activity feels so overwhelming and difficult that we keep putting it off.

When we make a plan before we work, we can start to focus on breaking our work down into smaller pieces. This feels more manageable. Sometimes, writing out a really detailed plan can help us to gradually slide into doing the work by starting on the first activity in the plan. This is a technique used by high performance athletes such as ultra marathon runners or ironman contestants. They know that they have a big job ahead of them. They achieve it by breaking it down into smaller, manageable activities. By focusing on completing each of these smaller activities, for example, swimming to the next marker, they don’t think about the whole task which would be overwhelming. Instead, they focus on each next step. Writing a plan gives us the blueprint to use this technique in our academic work.

An example of making a plan before Biology homework 

Let’s try this with a subject-based piece of homework. Let’s say that we have to draw a diagram of the heart for homework. We can make a plan of the work just to think about what needs to be put into the diagram later. This is before we even try drawing the diagram. Now we aren’t working, we are just preparing, but we are also getting ready for the diagram and the work that we have to do. It’s a relaxed way to work as we think about all the pieces of information that we would want to include. Then, when we do draw the diagram, we are ready and prepared and all the information is ready to write into it. Essentially, we broke the activity down into different stages and did each piece separately.

We might even just go from planning into creating the diagram because it felt easier to just keep working! 

 

 

Summary

Writing a plan improves performance in a number of ways – it reduces procrastination and breaks work into manageable pieces of activity.

To see how making a plan ties up with retrieval and revision techniques, check out our downloadable workbook on Revision designed for schools:

https://cambridgeacademicperformance.co.uk/product/revision-technique/