I tend to see all projects as starting with a plan: you have an outcome, and the first step to reaching it is to break it into more manageable pieces. But that doesn’t need to be my universal approach; some projects do best by starting with *action*. I’m finding this more and more with my work, that I often see the planning stage *as* action, even when I’m working on something that would benefit from a less linearly-driven approach. For example, I recently started *viciously* decluttering my house. I had to intentionally stop myself from trying to plan anything; it’s worked well to go through my belongings before trying to organize it or buy containers or whatever. But a project that involves something like multi-step automations, I tend to do best when I can map them out before hand. I guess it’s a matter of how flexible each element of a project is; I can always rewrite the beginning or middle of a blog post, but it’s much harder to adjust the beginning of building out an entirely new system. From [[Clear, James - 3-2-1 Newsletter - 2024-07-18]]’s newsletter: >“Some projects benefit from early action. If you’re writing a book, it’s easy to spend a lot of time brainstorming titles and dreaming up an outline, but it’s better to simply write. The book discovers itself as you go. Yes, you’ll need to go back and organize things, but this is easier to do once you have material. The key is to act first and then organize your thinking. > >Other projects benefit from early planning. The best way to build a skyscraper is to plan carefully. If you start placing steel beams on day one, you’re guaranteed to run into problems. It is harder to make changes once you’ve begun. You’ll need to tear it down and start over again. The key is to organize your thinking and then act. > >Do you need early action or early planning?”