Start With The End In Mind — Paul Henman — Toronto Agile Coach

We have completed another lap around the sun, and that’s often a time to think about our plans for the new year. In my previous post, I talked about New Year’s Resolutions and thinking in smaller steps rather than a goal that might take 12 months to complete. But if you only think in small steps and focus on where you want to be in a few days or weeks, then it’s often hard to know if you’re going in the right direction — there can be such a big gap between where you are and where you want to be.

If you were planning on travelling from Toronto to Montreal then you need to plan further ahead than just “which street do I take now?” You might think that was a bad example as the 401 covers the vast majority of the distance, but that assumes you’re optimising for time and that your method of travel is by road, i.e. you have already ruled out many alternatives. Take a step back and consider your goals: if minimising travel time is the primary aim, then flying is significantly faster. If you want the freedom to move around and have a meal without it impacting your travel time, then the train could be your best option.

But let’s go back to driving between the two cities, and assume we have picked the route we would like to take. We set off but before long we discover there’s a problem ahead: an accident is causing a long delay. If we had only been inspecting our progress over small steps, then we might not see the impact of the accident until we’re sitting in the traffic jam and it’s too…