We’ve already covered how to Creating your All Out Massive Action Plan, but what if you want a more basic pattern for developing your Massive Action Plans.  If you dig deep, you will find that all massive action plans have the same three underlying steps.  These three seemingly simple steps are the key to every successful massive action plan.

What are these three steps?

Here they are:

• Plan
• Do
• Review

That’s pretty simple right?  You’ll find, as you dive into Plan-Do-Review that this simple concept holds great power, because each section forces you to think in different ways.

• Planning requires thinking about the future
• Doing requires getting off your butt and … well … doing something
• Reviewing requires thinking about the measure of the actions just taken

And then of course it’s time for you to start planning again.

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Planning

In order to plan, you need to be clear on a couple of things.

Answer the following questions.  (Do it in private, and be brutally honest with yourself)

• What measurable result do I want?  (Is it publishing a book, walking on the moon or simply being a better neighbor?)
• When I have that measurable result, what will be available to me ?  (What can you do that you can’t do now?)
• What benefit am I gaining today, by not having this measurable result?  (This is why you needed privacy and brutality.)
• Am I willing to do what it takes to have that measurable result?  (If you’re not, that’s great, you just saved a ton of time and energy.)

Assuming that your answer to the last question was yes, do the following:

• Look 5 years into the future, and see yourself having your result.
• Spend a minute or two (or ten) enjoying that future.
• From that point in the future:

• look back and describe what kind of massive actions you took that got you that result.
• Look at the groups you joined, and the groups you stopped interacting with.
• Look at the books you read
• Look at the books you wrote
• Write down how you got to where you got.

That’s it, that’s your basic plan.  The next thing to do is figure out what you can do in the next two weeks to move you forward on that timeline.

• That might be going to the library and getting 6 introductory books on your focused topic.
• That might be guessing how many pages you can get read in two weeks.
• That might be finding groups meeting within a 3 hour drive that would further your goals in your focused topic
• It might be identifying a personality trait that is holding you back, and starting to alter that trait.

At this point, speed is more important than accuracy, getting a bad plan done in an hour is a thousand times more valuable than spending 120 hours over the next 5 weeks coming up with a perfect plan.

Remember, mistakes are not fatal, as long as you learn the right lessons from your mistakes.

Besides, you’re going to be doing this exercise again in just 14 days.

Doing

Over then next two weeks, you’re going to be taking actions.

You will be having successes and failures.

You will accomplish some things, and fail to accomplish others.

Reviewing

Now’s the time to sit down and review the results of your actions from the last two weeks.

In your review, it’s important to remember that there is no failure, only feedback.

That is, if you can separate the emotional content from the perceived failure (review), you have a great diagnostic tool to refine your plans (plan) and end up with more successful results (do) the next time out.

Ask yourself:

• What worked?
• What didn’t work?

Was that writers group filled with a bunch of negative people who have never been published?  Maybe you need to find a different group.

Was that writers group focused on exactly what you wanted to focus on?  Maybe you should find out what other groups the various members are also members of.

Of course, you’ll have to customize your review to fit with your specific situation, but you get the idea.

A Last Thought

You may find it useful to think of this practice as Review – Plan – Do.

There are two reasons for doing this.

1. You can never really plan, without reviewing what has happened in the past.  You may have noticed that your first plan required you to review your past.
2. It’s important to keep the review phase separate from the plan phase.   You lose a lot of the power of Plan-Do-Review if you mix and mingle your Review and Plan phases.

Here’s to your success

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Related posts:

1. Creating Your All Out Massive Action Plan
2. The Magic of Consistent Action
3. Three Steps To Refine Your Ideas
4. The Eighteen Month Principle