The Next Step is Enough
You Don't Need the Whole Plan Before You Move
There was a stretch where I kept waiting for clarity on the whole path before I'd let myself take a single step. I wanted the five year version before I'd commit to year one. I knew I wanted to start a coaching company. I knew I'd have to quit my full time job to get it started. I knew I'd need to pick up something part time and less demanding to float my income while I built the business. I had enough to get started. I did not have enough to feel secure. I wanted the whole plan laid out before I moved, and I kept waiting for a version of "ready" that would give me the confidence to start.
It never came. Not all at once, anyway. What I noticed instead was that clarity showed up one step at a time, and only after I'd actually acted on the step I already had in front of me. I was treating clarity like something I was owed before I started. It's actually something you earn by moving.
Here's the belief I had to let go of: if you can't see the whole plan, you're not ready to act. That sounds responsible. It isn't. Most of the time it's just fear wearing a planning costume. Sometimes what feels like waiting for clarity is really just waiting for permission to stay still.
If you're waiting to take action until you have the full picture, here's what you really need to know: you're not going to get it. Nobody gets the five year version before year one starts. What you get is the next step. So find it. What's the one thing in front of you right now that you already know you need to do? Name it, then take it.
Once you've taken that step, that's when you let your experience inform the next move. You get more light on the path by walking it, not by standing at the trailhead trying to see the whole trail first.
COVID taught me this the hard way. Every goal I'd written down in January was obsolete by March. I could have written the whole year off as a failure and waited for a "normal" year to try again. Instead I pivoted. I started quarterly planning instead of annual planning. A year out is a lot of life away, and a lot can knock a twelve month goal sideways before summer even gets here. Ninety days, I can actually see. If I've got a vision for where I'm headed and the next ninety days mapped out, I can act. I don't need bullet points for what my life looks like this time next year. I need to know what I'm doing this quarter, and I need to start doing it.
So instead of asking what the whole plan is, I started asking a smaller question. What's the next right step I already know I need to take? And I started taking it before I had the rest figured out.
Stop waiting for the whole map. Ask what the next step is, take it, and let what you learn from that step inform the one after it.
What's the next step you already know you've been putting off because you don't have the whole plan yet?
