Begin With The End In Mind
One of the things that often keeps creatives from doing their best work is completing their best work. Eventually, they lose focus, get overwhelmed with what’s next, and give up. There’s a way through it, but they can’t see it.
The problem lies before the creation ever began. They never had a plan on how they were going to see this thing through. They rely on their creative whimsy and woo to pull them through and justify the end results not being what they imagined as a turn of mystic events by the creative Gods. In reality, if we can plan the work and then work the plan we will hit the originally intended target more than we are currently.
There’s a simple method to this planning: Begin with the end in mind.
Now, before I get into this, it’s important you understand the DO vs DUE framework. If you haven’t learned that yet, you can review it here.
So here’s how this works. Let’s say for example you have a creative piece set to launch in 3 months. That’s 12 weeks, 60 weekdays. Now that we know the timeline, let’s mind-dump everything that will take this from an idea to a fully formed creation.
Some things to ask yourself or your team during this mind dump:
Who’s involved?
How long will outsourced deliverables take?
What’s the typical turnaround time for tasks involved in the project?
Next, you’ll “paint done” what this thing will look like 12 weeks from now. Once you have that clear picture, work backward from there week-by-week and describe what done at the end of each week looks like.
WEEK 12: LAUNCH
WEEKS 10-11: PROMOTE
WEEKS 5-9: DEVELOP
WEEKS 3-4: DESIGN
WEEK 2: DREAM
WEEK 1: DEFINE
(You may notice some elements look familiar. This is where we execute the 4D creative process. Familiarize yourself with that process with this video.)
Finally, it’s time to get to work, You have the plan in place, equipped with margin, and considering all involved. So wake up each of these 60 weekdays, hit play on that week’s tasks, and enjoy the fruits of your planning.