Planning is an iterative process. You will repeat all 8 steps on an
ongoing basis, further refining the plan each time. For part 1, "set
(or reset) the scope", you will decide on who to include in your plan
and set a time horizon for planning.
On the first iteration you might focus your attention on yourself and
the upcoming months, with some consideration to other people. However,
the greatest happiness comes from bigger achievements and from the
vicarious joy of making other people happy. Therefore on subsequent
iterations your plans will give greater consideration to more people
in a widening circle (your family, your community, all of society) and
expand the time horizon (a few years, your life, the legacy you leave
beyond your life).
This is a very simple step. The simplest is just to take a minute to
choose the scope in your mind, and then proceed to the next steps.
However, the most effective planning occurs if you write down your
plans. If you are using a planning app such as the
Pathways Planner,
this is the time to configure a plan to include the
time-frame and people who you wish to include in this iteration.
A typical way to organize a plan, is to show your goals in a grid,
where time is on the horizontal axis. Then the particular goals can
be fit onto the time scale. This is the method used by typical
project planning tools, where tasks are organized onto a time chart.
If you use Pathways, the initial planning view is presented with time
on the horizontal axis. Rather than a linear view of time, you divide
the plan into stages of your life called "eras". An era could be a
short period of time, such as the upcoming school semester. If the
scope of your plan is to complete your education (for example, to get
a university degree), then you would have multiple planning periods
("eras") covering the time until you graduate. If you are planning a
wider scope, you might add in eras for your working life or for
retirement.
With Pathways, these time periods do not need to be of equal duration.
As you proceed through your life, you can split the "eras" into
smaller periods, in order to make more detailed plans.
You also need to put people or groups into your plan. If you are
doing the plan in collaboration with other people, you would certainly
put those people into the plan, but also you would include other
people whom your decisions will affect: your family members, friends,
associates, or wider groups such as simply "society" (all people
collectively).
You can also include pets in your plan, or groups of animals. They
can't express their wishes, but you can plan for the effects of your
decisions on them.
If you use Pathways, the initial planning view has a coloured band for
each person, animal, or group covered by the plan. So you would
configure the scope by clicking in the bars illustrated here:
As illustrated above, using Pathways the plan is filled in by clicking
in the "1, 2, 3" positions shown above:
Click in the title of any band, and a pop-up window will appear where you
can name a person who is involved in the plan.
Click in the title of any period ("era"), and a pop-up window will appear
where you can define the start and duration of the period, or of multiple
periods at once.
Click in any coloured band, and a pop-up window will appear where you can
define a planned outcome or a tentative outcome that involves the person
for that band.
To define the scope, you would choose the time frame and persons; the outcomes
will be planned in the next steps.
To proceed to the next step, click "NEXT".
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