April 29, 2024 • 7 mins
In this episode I talk about why long-term goals don't work and how we've been mislead all this time by the traditional goal setting advice. I also share my story of finding out about Agile and how it changed my approach to personal productivity.
Link to the video version of this episode.
Timestamps:
- (00:00) - Traditional productivity advice
- (00:32) - New Year's Resolutions
- (00:55) - My first job at a fast-growing startup
- (01:10) - Corporate world - how things are usually done
- (01:40) - The time the status quo got questioned
- (02:30) - Creation of Agile Framework for building software
- (03:03) - How Agile works
- (04:31) - My story of learning about Agile
- (06:29) - I stopped creating long-term plans 10 years ago
Useful links
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- Start Here page to see the blogposts on the core principles of Agile and how those can be applied to personal productivity
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- YouTube to 'Back to Agile Basics' type of videos
- Monthly Method School for step-by-step instructions on how to run your first Agile sprint ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Polina Bee (00:00):
Everywhere you look people are telling you to create
long term plans. 10 year plansare broken down into yearly
plans. Those are further brokendown into monthly, daily goals.
That's the common advice, buthave you noticed that this
advice never works out? Haven'twe all spent hours, days
(00:21):
creating beautiful Excel sheet,tracking pages, habit trackers,
color coding them.
Haven't we all done it? I suredid a lot of that in the past.
Every new year would start withthe it's new year, new me, new
long term goal kind of exercise.And then this wouldn't last for
(00:44):
more than a couple of weeks. Andevery year, it was the same.
And I always blamed myself fornot being disciplined enough,
for not having the right goals,for not being committed. But
that was until I got a job at afast growing tech startup. There
I learned that the mostinnovative companies of our
times found out that thisapproach, this long term
(01:07):
planning approach never worksand they decided to do something
different. You see in thecorporate world, historically,
there was the same approach. Youplan for the next 5 years.
You create the budgets, theplans. You have a bunch of
meetings. You create a bunch ofversions of these documents, and
(01:29):
you can spend months at at theend of the year preparing for
the next year. And a lot ofcompanies still do that. I'm not
saying that it's obsolete.
But that was also the case inthe software world. And then
these software engineers, beingengineers, they decided to
question this whole assumptionbecause they found out that,
yes, they spent all this time inmeetings. But the moment they
(01:53):
start implementing this plan inJanuary, it never works out. The
milestones are not hit. Theadvertising that they thought
would work doesn't work.
The software that they thoughtwould be in demand is not in
demand. And they realized thatthis plan doesn't work out
because it's initially based onthe crop load assumptions about
(02:16):
the world, about the future,about the company, about the
customers. And what happens ifthese assumptions are not
correct assumptions? And it'sunrealistic to expect of
yourself that your assumptionsare always correct. So they
decided to ditch this whole longterm multi month process and
(02:37):
decided to do something else.
They created agile framework forbuilt in software. You can
easily find it online if youtype agile manifesto. It's
basically kind of like theopposite approach to the
traditional way of buildingsoftware. That happened in the
nineties, quickly spread intoall of the software world, and
(03:00):
now that's pretty much adefault. That's how software is
built.
So long story short, what theydid differently is that they
decided to work in short termsprints. Those sprints last from
2 to 6 weeks, generallyspeaking. And you only need to
plan for the next sprint. Youdon't have to plan for the next
in years. You plan your work forthe next sprint.
(03:23):
You commit yourself to thiswork. You don't accept other
tasks. You lock yourself in forthe sprint. You ship it, and the
goal is to ship, the product tothe world at the end of the
sprint. So you're not keeping itin a draft mode.
You're not continuing to work onit. You ship it to the world.
(03:44):
You see how the world reacts,how your customers react, what
they say, how they use it. Andbased on this real life
feedback, not based on yourassumption, but on this real
life feedback, you then planyour next sprint. And so you
never have to plan for more than2 to 6 weeks at a time and as a
(04:06):
result those planning sessionsare usually short.
You review every sprint, youlearn from it and your next plan
is always based on thesefindings. Less planning, more
doing, more learning. That'spretty much the core essence of
agile. As I said, nowadaysthat's kind of the default
(04:28):
method for building software. Itwas used in all the startups
that I worked at.
What boggles me is that it neverspread out into the personal
productivity world. I was so madwhen I learned about agile in my
early twenties. I was like, areyou kidding me? Are you freaking
(04:48):
kidding me? You knew all thistime from the nineties that this
whole long term plan approachdoesn't work, that it's a waste
of time, that it's based on thecrapload assumptions, that those
assumptions are rarely correct.
You created something completelydifferent, so you have a
(05:08):
solution and you never told therest of the world about it. You
just kept it inside your littlesoftware industry? I was so mad.
How come the rest of us are toldevery new year to create this
long term goals, to then breakit down into the milestones, and
(05:29):
then bend your head against thewall when these plans don't work
out. And then we blame ourselvesfor for this not working out
when at the core, it's anabsolutely wrong way to do
things.
I was so firsthand at howeffective it was. And it was
(05:52):
such a drastic, comparisonbecause I got this job after my
job for a federal government,And it was day and night. Here
at the startup, I was seeing howquickly. So every I I don't
remember how long the sprintswere. I think they were like 2
or 3 weeks.
But every 3 weeks they wereshipping, new products and like
(06:16):
you can actually go to thewebsite and see in real life how
the product was changing. Newfeatures were added. Things
worked faster, better. And soonce I saw that I decided to
ditch long term planningapproach and use the same agile
approach for my personal goalsin my personal life. And that
(06:38):
was in 2014.
So it's been 10 years since Ilearned about agile and since I
decided to start using it in mylife. 10 years of trying it out
and I never went back. It workedso well. I tried a lot of
things. I experimented.
Some things worked. Some thingsdidn't. But I think right now I
(07:01):
have a very solid approach ofhow you can apply agile to your
life. And that's what I'm goingto share on this channel. It's
very easy.
It's very effective. You don'thave to buy complicated
software. If you don't want towait, I have a blog that I've
been writing for the past 3years. It has all the blog posts
(07:22):
about sprint planning, scrumboard, daily stand ups, print
retrospectives. It's all free.
It's all there. It's just intext format. So if you don't
mind reading and you want tolearn right away on on how to
apply it to your life, I wouldsuggest going to monthly method
dotcom/starthere and thereyou'll find the core articles on
(07:48):
this method. If you don't mindwaiting for the videos I'll be
posting them shortly. Bye.
Everywhere you look people are telling you to create
long term plans. 10 year plansare broken down into yearly
plans. Those are further brokendown into monthly, daily goals.
That's the common advice, buthave you noticed that this
advice never works out? Haven'twe all spent hours, days
(00:21):
creating beautiful Excel sheet,tracking pages, habit trackers,
color coding them.
Haven't we all done it? I suredid a lot of that in the past.
Every new year would start withthe it's new year, new me, new
long term goal kind of exercise.And then this wouldn't last for
(00:44):
more than a couple of weeks. Andevery year, it was the same.
And I always blamed myself fornot being disciplined enough,
for not having the right goals,for not being committed. But
that was until I got a job at afast growing tech startup. There
I learned that the mostinnovative companies of our
times found out that thisapproach, this long term
(01:07):
planning approach never worksand they decided to do something
different. You see in thecorporate world, historically,
there was the same approach. Youplan for the next 5 years.
You create the budgets, theplans. You have a bunch of
meetings. You create a bunch ofversions of these documents, and
(01:29):
you can spend months at at theend of the year preparing for
the next year. And a lot ofcompanies still do that. I'm not
saying that it's obsolete.
But that was also the case inthe software world. And then
these software engineers, beingengineers, they decided to
question this whole assumptionbecause they found out that,
yes, they spent all this time inmeetings. But the moment they
(01:53):
start implementing this plan inJanuary, it never works out. The
milestones are not hit. Theadvertising that they thought
would work doesn't work.
The software that they thoughtwould be in demand is not in
demand. And they realized thatthis plan doesn't work out
because it's initially based onthe crop load assumptions about
(02:16):
the world, about the future,about the company, about the
customers. And what happens ifthese assumptions are not
correct assumptions? And it'sunrealistic to expect of
yourself that your assumptionsare always correct. So they
decided to ditch this whole longterm multi month process and
(02:37):
decided to do something else.
They created agile framework forbuilt in software. You can
easily find it online if youtype agile manifesto. It's
basically kind of like theopposite approach to the
traditional way of buildingsoftware. That happened in the
nineties, quickly spread intoall of the software world, and
(03:00):
now that's pretty much adefault. That's how software is
built.
So long story short, what theydid differently is that they
decided to work in short termsprints. Those sprints last from
2 to 6 weeks, generallyspeaking. And you only need to
plan for the next sprint. Youdon't have to plan for the next
in years. You plan your work forthe next sprint.
(03:23):
You commit yourself to thiswork. You don't accept other
tasks. You lock yourself in forthe sprint. You ship it, and the
goal is to ship, the product tothe world at the end of the
sprint. So you're not keeping itin a draft mode.
You're not continuing to work onit. You ship it to the world.
(03:44):
You see how the world reacts,how your customers react, what
they say, how they use it. Andbased on this real life
feedback, not based on yourassumption, but on this real
life feedback, you then planyour next sprint. And so you
never have to plan for more than2 to 6 weeks at a time and as a
(04:06):
result those planning sessionsare usually short.
You review every sprint, youlearn from it and your next plan
is always based on thesefindings. Less planning, more
doing, more learning. That'spretty much the core essence of
agile. As I said, nowadaysthat's kind of the default
(04:28):
method for building software. Itwas used in all the startups
that I worked at.
What boggles me is that it neverspread out into the personal
productivity world. I was so madwhen I learned about agile in my
early twenties. I was like, areyou kidding me? Are you freaking
(04:48):
kidding me? You knew all thistime from the nineties that this
whole long term plan approachdoesn't work, that it's a waste
of time, that it's based on thecrapload assumptions, that those
assumptions are rarely correct.
You created something completelydifferent, so you have a
(05:08):
solution and you never told therest of the world about it. You
just kept it inside your littlesoftware industry? I was so mad.
How come the rest of us are toldevery new year to create this
long term goals, to then breakit down into the milestones, and
(05:29):
then bend your head against thewall when these plans don't work
out. And then we blame ourselvesfor for this not working out
when at the core, it's anabsolutely wrong way to do
things.
I was so firsthand at howeffective it was. And it was
(05:52):
such a drastic, comparisonbecause I got this job after my
job for a federal government,And it was day and night. Here
at the startup, I was seeing howquickly. So every I I don't
remember how long the sprintswere. I think they were like 2
or 3 weeks.
But every 3 weeks they wereshipping, new products and like
(06:16):
you can actually go to thewebsite and see in real life how
the product was changing. Newfeatures were added. Things
worked faster, better. And soonce I saw that I decided to
ditch long term planningapproach and use the same agile
approach for my personal goalsin my personal life. And that
(06:38):
was in 2014.
So it's been 10 years since Ilearned about agile and since I
decided to start using it in mylife. 10 years of trying it out
and I never went back. It workedso well. I tried a lot of
things. I experimented.
Some things worked. Some thingsdidn't. But I think right now I
(07:01):
have a very solid approach ofhow you can apply agile to your
life. And that's what I'm goingto share on this channel. It's
very easy.
It's very effective. You don'thave to buy complicated
software. If you don't want towait, I have a blog that I've
been writing for the past 3years. It has all the blog posts
(07:22):
about sprint planning, scrumboard, daily stand ups, print
retrospectives. It's all free.
It's all there. It's just intext format. So if you don't
mind reading and you want tolearn right away on on how to
apply it to your life, I wouldsuggest going to monthly method
dotcom/starthere and thereyou'll find the core articles on
(07:48):
this method. If you don't mindwaiting for the videos I'll be
posting them shortly. Bye.
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