Meticulously planning ahead can get a bad rap. Here’s why you should always think ahead even when it contradicts your personality and doesn’t feel right.

How many of you have made a New Years Resolution? How many have made a new years resolutions and then stuck to it?

Resolutions can be fun when you’re thinking about the future and the possibilities that finally learning Spanish or getting into a healthy gym/exercise routine will bring. Things can quickly sour when we think about past resolutions that fell apart in the first few week of the new year.

The number one reason for New Years resolutions failing and people quitting those new habits, behaviors, etc is due to lack of planning. The list of resolutions I’ve achieved is way shorter than the list of resolutions that I’ve actually dreamed about. Learn a new language, spend more time in the out of doors, fix and ride my bike, go camping, learn how to cook properly, take better care of my cars. The list goes on and on.

I’m an optimistic person. I enjoy the viewing life from the bright side and approaching things with an optimistic outlook. I used to think that if something is meant to be than it would fall in place on it’s own, regardless of my hand in planning and thinking about it ahead of time. That was a huge lie that I liked to tell myself.

The easiest way to turn a new behavior into a lasting habit and a part of our life is to plan that into our day, incorporate it into our week, and think about our life with this new behavior. We’ve dreamt up what our life would look like when we are already fluent in Spanish and we like thinking about that. But we don’t like or simply forget to think about what it means to train and practice Spanish so that we can achieve that fluency.

There are different tips and tricks to learning new things that I will eventually break down and will link to  when the time arises. Learning a new language has different accelerators than becoming a better mathematician. Marathon training has different nuances than becoming a bodybuilder. Something that each new endeavor has is the need for a plan.

Planning is/can be the building block for everything, and it’s worth it.

I’ve been going to the gym very consistently for the past 8 years. I’ve gone through the fly by the seat of your pants approach and gone to just fuck around and break a sweat. I’ve also gone through a powerlifting training protocol and followed through various training programs. Which approach do you think brought more success and measurable progress? Exactly, the planned programs are money.

Creating a plan for expanding your normal behavior or schedule to include something like meditating more often is the best way to assure you will meditate more often. Build the time into your day and abide to that new schedule you’re creating. Eventually it will become a habit and you won’t need to devote as much brain power towards how you will meditate more, because you’re already doing it.