Module 1 · The life navigation loop · Lesson 4 of 6

Plan, act, observe

Turn a direction into a next step, take it, and notice what actually happens.

8 min read · Free — no account needed to read

The idea

A direction and a decision are still only intentions. The next three steps of the loop are where intentions meet reality: plan, act, observe.

Planning turns a direction into a concrete next action — something you can actually do, at a time and place. Acting is doing it, often before you feel ready. Observing is noticing what actually happened: not what you hoped, not what you feared, but what the evidence shows.

Observation is the step most people skip. We act, then move on without looking, or we judge the result by how we feel about it. But observation is what makes the loop a learning loop. Without it, you repeat the same plan and hope for a different result.

Why it matters

Plans without action change nothing, and action without observation teaches nothing. Linking the three means every attempt, whether it works or not, gives you information for the next one.

See it happen

Kofi wants to get fitter. His plan is to run three mornings a week before work.

The first read

He manages it once in the first week, then oversleeps twice. He decides morning running is not for him and stops thinking about it.

With this idea

He writes down what he observed: he ran on the day he had laid out his kit the night before; he overslept after late nights. The plan changes — kit out the night before, runs after early nights only — and the next week he runs twice.

What changed

He observed what actually happened and used it to adjust the plan instead of abandoning it.

Easy to get wrong

• Over-planning. A plan only needs to reach the next concrete step; detail beyond that is often rewritten by reality anyway.
• Observing through feelings alone. “It went badly” is a feeling; “I did it once out of three” is an observation you can work with.

What this rests on

Practical wisdom. A widely used way of working. Useful to try — not a scientific law.

• Peter Gollwitzer — implementation intentions (1999), with a 2006 review by Gollwitzer & Sheeran — Deciding in advance when, where and how you will act (“if it is 7pm on Thursday, I will…”) makes follow-through considerably more likely.

Try it: One small loop

1. Pick one small thing you want to do in the next two days.
2. Plan it: write exactly what, when and where.
3. Decide in advance how you will observe it — what will you write down afterwards?

Reflect

• Which of the three — plan, act or observe — do you most often skip?
• What is one plan you gave up on without ever looking at what actually happened?

Use it in the coming days

Put one concrete action on your schedule this week with a time and place. Afterwards, write two lines about what actually happened.

Where to do it: My Schedule

Your schedule is where a plan gets a time, and where you can see afterwards what really happened.