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Mar 09, 20257 min read

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Planning for Everything

The Design of Paths and Goals

🤖 AI Summary

TL;DR 🚀

Planning for Everything teaches that planning is not a rigid blueprint but a dynamic, iterative design of paths and goals—empowering you to adapt, reflect, and co-create your future through flexible, social, tangible, and agile methods.

A New & Surprising Perspective 🌟

  • Innovative Framing: The book challenges the notion that planning is about strict, predetermined steps. Instead, it shows that planning is a creative, evolving process that blends logic with intuition. 😮
  • Integration of Science & Art: Peter Morville bridges cognitive psychology, design thinking, and real-world examples (from hiking adventures to AI) to reveal that planning is as much about self-awareness and reflection as it is about efficiency. 🔍
  • Social & Collaborative Approach: Rather than planning in isolation, the book emphasizes the benefits of planning with others—enhancing creativity, diversity of thought, and mutual accountability. 🤝

Deep Dive 🔬

Topics & Themes 📚

  • The Nature of Planning: Explores planning as the design of paths and goals, drawing parallels between personal life, organizational strategy, and even animal behavior. 🐘
  • Four Principles & Six Practices: Introduces the STAR FINDER mnemonic—emphasizing Social, Tangible, Agile, and Reflective principles alongside the practices of framing, imagining, narrowing, deciding, executing, and reflecting. 🔄
  • The Role of Belief & Bias: Discusses how our mental models, emotions, and biases shape our plans, highlighting the interplay between rational decision-making (System 2) and intuitive, fast thinking (System 1). ⚖️

Methods & Research 🧪

  • Scientific Studies: Draws on cognitive psychology experiments like the Tower of Hanoi puzzle to illustrate how planning skills develop and vary across age, health, and context. 📊
  • Design Thinking & Prototyping: Advocates for making plans tangible through sketches, prototypes, and maps to surface hidden assumptions and invite collaborative refinement. 🎨
  • Agile & Lean Methodologies: Examines how frameworks like Agile and Lean—originally from software and manufacturing—offer adaptive, incremental approaches to planning in uncertain environments. 💡

Significant Theories & Mental Models 🧠

  • Planning as a Dynamic Process: Emphasizes that plans must evolve based on feedback, with the act of planning itself being an ongoing experiment rather than a fixed recipe. 🔄
  • Embodied Cognition: Illustrates how planning isn’t solely a mental exercise; it involves using our bodies, tools, and environments (e.g., the analogy with Tetris) to enhance cognitive efficiency. 🕹️
  • Double Diamond Framework: Uses design models like the “Double Diamond” to explain the diverging and converging phases of planning—from exploring possibilities to narrowing down on a solution. 💎

Practical Takeaways & Techniques 🛠️

  • Step-by-Step Guidance:
    • Framing: Begin by questioning your assumptions and clarifying the problem in relation to your desired outcome. 🔍
    • Imagining: Brainstorm and prototype multiple paths before settling on one, allowing for creative divergence. 🎨
    • Narrowing & Deciding: Prioritize options by weighing drivers, risks, and tradeoffs; then commit to a course with clear metrics. ✅
    • Executing & Reflecting: Implement your plan with the readiness to pivot, and always review outcomes to refine future planning. 🔄
  • Collaborative Planning: Engage diverse perspectives early on to challenge your biases and enhance the quality of your decisions. 🤝
  • Mindfulness & Adaptation: Incorporate reflective practices to stay aware of your evolving needs and the shifting external landscape. 🧘‍♂️

Critical Analysis 🔍

  • Scientific Backing:
    • The book leverages research from cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and even studies on animal behavior to validate its claims about planning as a skill that evolves over time. 📊
    • It discusses established experiments (e.g., Tower of Hanoi) and modern AI research (like AlphaGo) to illustrate the balance between prediction and improvisation. 🤖
  • Author Credentials:
    • Peter Morville is a respected figure in information architecture and design. His extensive experience—evidenced by his practical work and thought leadership in designing digital experiences—adds credibility to his insights on planning. 👨‍💼
  • Authoritative Reviews:
    • Early praise from experts such as Josie Barnes Parker and Irene Au highlights the book’s value in both practical and philosophical realms. Their endorsements suggest that the book resonates across disciplines, from user experience to strategic planning. ⭐
  • Quality of Information:
    • The blend of personal anecdotes, empirical research, and design theory provides a robust, multidimensional framework for understanding planning.
    • The accessible yet nuanced style makes complex concepts understandable, even as it invites deeper reflection and iterative improvement. 🎯

Additional Book Recommendations 📖

  • Alternate on the Same Topic:
    • Getting Things Done by David Allen offers a structured, practical system for managing workflow and tasks—a complementary approach to planning with a focus on productivity. ✅
  • Tangentially Related:
    • The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander, which inspires creative thinking and reimagining possibilities, aligning well with the book’s emphasis on flexible planning. 🎨
  • Diametrically Opposed:
    • Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb challenges the very idea of over-planning by advocating for systems that benefit from disorder and uncertainty, offering a counterpoint to traditional planning methods. ⚡
  • Fiction Incorporating Related Ideas:
    • Dune by Frank Herbert is a science fiction epic that weaves intricate themes of strategy, foresight, and adaptive planning into its narrative, resonating with the core ideas of designing futures. 🌌
  • More General or More Specific:
    • Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman provides a broader exploration of human decision-making processes that underpin planning, offering context to why we plan the way we do. 🧠
  • More Rigorous or More Accessible:

Each section of Planning for Everything is enriched with illustrative examples, reflective questions, and actionable advice—all of which make it a compelling guide for anyone looking to master the art of planning in an unpredictable world. Happy planning! 😊

💬 Chat GPT Prompt

Summarize the book: Planning for Everything by Peter Morville. Start with a TL;DR - a single statement that conveys a maximum of the useful information provided in the book. Next, explain how this book may offer a new or surprising perspective. Follow this with a deep dive. Catalogue the topics, methods, and research discussed. Be sure to highlight any significant theories, theses, or mental models proposed. Emphasize practical takeaways, including detailed, specific, concrete, step-by-step advice, guidance, or techniques discussed. Provide a critical analysis of the quality of the information presented, using scientific backing, author credentials, authoritative reviews, and other markers of high quality information as justification. Make the following additional book recommendations: the best alternate book on the same topic; the best book that is tangentially related; the best book that is diametrically opposed; the best fiction book that incorporates related ideas; the best book that is more general or more specific; and the best book that is more rigorous or more accessible than this book. Format your response as markdown, starting at heading level H3, with inline links, for easy copy paste. Use meaningful emojis generously (at least one per heading, bullet point, and paragraph) to enhance readability. Do not include broken links or links to commercial sites.

📝🐒 Human Notes

Systems & Contexts

  • invite people to help solve an impossible problem
  • ”we learn too late when we fail to fit practice and play into planning”
  • plan and search belong together

Chapters

  1. Realizing the future

  2. The planning process includes at least the following six functions
    1. forming a representation of the problem
    2. choosing a goal
    3. deciding to plan
    4. formulating a plan
    5. executing and monitoring the plan
    6. and learning from the plan

  3. Tower of Hanoi
    1. Used to measure planning ability
  4. STAR FINDER
    1. Principles
    1. Social
    2. Tangible
    3. Agile
    4. Reflective
      2. Practices
    5. Framing
    6. Imagining
    7. Narrowing
    8. Deciding
    9. Executing
    10. Reflecting
      3.
  7. Narrowing
    1. Drivers & Levers
      1. Drivers eliminate options
        1. e.g. too costly
      2. Levers open new paths & fortify existing possible paths
        1. integral to systems thinking
    2. Estimates & Risks
      1. Estimates
        1. Often very wrong
        2. Optimism bias
          1.
  9. Executing
    1.

Include people in planning
Pros & cons, good; emotions, maybe better

Work breakdown structure
Agility
Metrics & 2-way doors
Procrastination = holding options

Point of no return
Flipping a coin may help
Habits bind

Referenced books

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Backlinks