There are quite a few reasons why you may not be able to follow your plan. Let's list the main ones:
1) procrastination and laziness
2) poor planning
3) new and important unplanned tasks and circumstances that take time and money.
The first reason is one of the most insidious. You want to achieve goals, you have even already laid them out, but you lack the willpower to start acting. You deceive yourself, find "more important" things to do every day — anything just to avoid doing what you planned. Even I sometimes have tasks that I take on without much enthusiasm because they bring no pleasure. What can you do to get rid of such apathy? For a start — reread the chapter "Favorable planning factors." Remember such things as praise, habit formation, visualization, public commitments, and other techniques that can help overcome inner resistance.
The second reason is poor planning. Unlike the first, it does not put a stop to achieving goals, but it can greatly complicate the process. Most often the problem lies in the fact that you misjudged your resources: you took on too many goals that you simply cannot handle in the current year — neither in time nor in finances. Part of the answer to this problem is already in the previous chapters. With each year you will determine more and more accurately how many goals are realistically within your power. But what to do in the first years, when, say, you took on 10 goals and already by the end of the first or second quarter see that you are not keeping up, loose ends are piling up, and everything is going off plan? There are several options here:
a) Replan the current year and remove one or two least important goals from it, returning them to the backlog.
b) Continue following the planned course. But that will most likely mean you will sleep less, rest less, burn out more often and, as a consequence, get sick. At the same time you will start cutting corners — doing tasks as fast as possible just to move on to the next one. As a result, none of the tasks will be done well. Of course, if you just need to haul 100 bags, that may be fine. But if you are, for example, learning a foreign language, such tasks require mindfulness, not haste.
c) Postpone 1–2 goals to vacation, if you have one planned. Yes, you will not rest fully, but at least you will not rush and fuss, losing quality.
Which path to choose — each person decides for themselves. But I would prefer moving goals rather than chronic cutting corners.
The third group is also not a critical reason to sound the alarm and abandon planning. Generally speaking, it also stems rather from the second group, namely from the fact that you initially took on too much and now cannot pull this year through. When planning goals for the year it is important not just to be confident that you will accomplish them, and not only to allow time for rest and time with loved ones, but also to set aside 10–15 percent of your personal time for something completely unplanned that may take a large amount of your time, energy, and money. Illnesses, deaths of loved ones, layoffs, and other unpleasant situations that no one is ever insured against. It is unlikely that in such times you will be up for your goals and tasks. So when planning your year, quarter, and month, always keep in mind that something unplanned may happen. And let it be pleasant unplannedness rather than something terrible.
To sum up everything said above. If you cannot follow a clear plan, first of all you need to determine whether this is because you are deceiving yourself and do not want to do it, or because you genuinely cannot keep up. The first reason will remain on your conscience, and at most what I can advise here is various techniques from favorable planning factors, as well as working on habits, willpower, and self-discipline. If the issue is that you cannot keep up, then you need to work through your goals and tasks better, check in with your plan more often, and reflect on what has been completed. Even if that does not help — anyone can write to me, and together we will try to work through a particular goal or even the entire annual plan.
