The Deliberately Simple Planning Book

Readers guide What’s this book about? Warning! This is a deliberately simple planning book. If you like your plans simple, then you are in the right place. If you like your plans complicated (boo!) well ... you are still welcome here too! Readers of this book value super simple – one page simple. We are huge fans of the one-page plans. The basis for this book is our One Page Rule. “If your plan is more than one page, then it’s too complicated.” –Ali Fowler This book is here to simplify the whole planning thing and help you find what will work for you. My plan for you with this book is to create something useful, simple to read and provides some actionable information you can go and try today. We talk about the most common planning challenge you may be facing right now and offer ten simple planning templates and approaches you can try today. Master the art of one-page plans and give yourself a structural pick-me-up for all those thoughts swimming around in your head. There’s no software required – just you, paper and something to write with. Too often, we make our plans too complicated. The more complicated, the less likely we are to follow them. If we are less likely to follow them, we are more likely to give up or ignore them. If we make our plans easy to create, follow and update, we are more likely to use them and embrace them. Who is it for? • Planners and non-planners! • People whose excuse for failing is not having a plan • People who believe their plans never work out • People who think they don’t have time to plan How to read this book Hint … you don’t need to start at the start. It may come as a bit of a surprise when you want to create a plan, sometimes starting at the start is the worst thing you can do. Why? Because it can feel like there is a lot in front of you – there’s a long way to go. From my experience, sometimes we should start at the end and work backwards, or start in the middle and figure it out from where we are right now and go from there. All of these approaches are correct, and we will talk more about them in this book. I’ve applied the same principle to this book. “My plan for you with this book is to start where you want, wherever you are and let’s just take it from there.” – Ali Fowler My plan for you with this book is to create something useful, simple to read, and provide some actionable information you can try today in just three simple steps. Step 1 ● Check out the contents and see what chapter is most interesting to you. ● Start there. ● This book is designed to be picked up and started anywhere. ● You don’t need to start at the start. Step 2 ● Take the Online Quiz – What Kind of Planning Personality Are You? ● Discover what type of planning personality you are – take the quiz or look for the personality types outlined in this book. ● To find the quiz, visit alifowler.org/simple-planning-book. Step 3 ● Choose one type of plan and try it out for a week or two. See what happens. ● Each of the plans in this book is accompanied by a brief description of how they work when they are best used and visuals of what they look like. All the planning templates are super simple, so you can create your own and customise it as you would like. And they are all available for you to download. Visit alifowler.org/simple-planning-book Enjoy the book, and I’d love to hear all about your plans. #simpleplanswork Ali Fowler Thought organiser and sometimes planner “Plan good. Feel good.” – Ali Fowler