🧩 Avoiding the Rapids: Plan Proactively
How to maintain focus & prevent overload
Proactive planning lets you steer calmly down the river. Without it, the rapids take over, leaving you struggling to maintain focus and prevent overload.
Is your team at the mercy of an endless stream of demands? You’re not alone—many teams are caught in the same current.
But here’s the thing: while you can’t always stop the flow of requests, you can control how you navigate them. It’s like guiding a canoe—paddle ahead, and you stay in control. Let the current take over, and before you know it, you’re in the rapids, struggling just to keep afloat. Proactive planning allows you to steer with purpose, avoid burnout, and get where you need to go—on your terms.
So remember, you have more control than you realize. You just need to pick up the paddle.
Let’s dive into four experiments that can help you piece together how to stay focused and avoid chaos.
From Feast or Famine to Balanced Intake
When I first started quarterly planning, it was feast or famine. As the deadline crept closer, the stress piled up until I was overwhelmed. Then, after the scramble, I’d get a break—just in time for the whole thing to start again. It’s like Dave Ramsey’s joke about Christmas: it happens at the same time every year, yet somehow, we’re never ready. Quarterly planning is no different. The fix? Spread it out. Time block a little strategic work every week. Start steady refinement now, and you’ll avoid the burnout cycle while keeping a sustainable, manageable pace.
From Action Paralysis to Confident Execution
Epic-level planning can feel like staring up at a mountain, unsure where to start climbing. We’ve all been there—big projects are daunting, especially when everyone’s pulling you in different directions. But whether it’s epics, features, or quarterly goals, the key is simple: start by identifying your targets and clearing out the fog of ambiguity. A Definition of Ready acts as your guide. Standard Operating Procedures (standardized processes and plug-and-play templates for typical scenarios) guide you through navigating stakeholder needs, defining priorities, and connecting the dots to bigger goals. Over time, these tools become your planning blueprint, turning that initial paralysis into confident execution.
From Victim Mentality to Leadership Mentality
It’s easy to feel like your stakeholders hold all the cards, setting priorities and deadlines with no room for you to plan. Maybe you’ve convinced yourself that planning is pointless—they’ll still throw last-minute requests at you, right? But here’s the thing: if you always accommodate every demand, you’re probably stuck in a reactive rut. When you take the initiative through discovery outreach to collaborate, stakeholders are often relieved. Proactive planning lets you steer the ship, not just ride the waves. It’s about moving from feeling like a victim to leading confidently and purposefully.
From Request Overwhelm to Balanced Workflow
Your team only has so much capacity, whether you realize it or not. Like a budget, once you spend it, it’s gone. So why jam every request into your pipeline without a second thought? A strawman roadmap can help you see the big rocks—your real priorities. You should weigh every new request against that plan. Does it matter more than what’s already there? If yes, make the shift. If not, don’t burn through your capacity on lower-impact tasks. You wouldn’t spend rent money on junk food. Leverage a strawman roadmap to help you transition from request overwhelm to a balanced workflow.
TLDR;
Proactive planning keeps you in control. Without it, you’re swept into the rapids, struggling to stay afloat while juggling last-minute chaos.
Cheers,
Miranda Dulin
👊 Whenever You’re Ready, There are 2 Ways I Can Help You:
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✍️ Quote of the Month
“You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”
Attributed to Martin Luther King Jr. by Marian Wright Edelman
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