How I'm Becoming A Better Planner

📲 The Cold Open

Lessons from the week.

Today I’m writing from Amsterdam on my 4th week of study abroad 🇳🇱. Something I’ve found, is that studying abroad and building a business both require you to be a great planner. Both force you into new situations, and without a plan its easy to feel overwhelmed. In this week’s version, I’m going to cover how I’m improving my organizational skills and how you can too.

Keep Your Mind Clean.

• Write It Down: If you’re anything like me, your mind is juggling a hundred things at any given moment. Keeping track of everything in your life is a draining activity on its own. So give your brain a break. Pick a place to write down your thoughts and tasks. Let your to-do list and calendar live outside of your mind, so you can give 100% to whatever task is currently at hand.

• Only Do Something Once: After doing laundry I’ll sometimes leave the hamper of clean clothes lying around, waiting to be folded. But recently, I’ve made an effort to fold them as soon as they’re done. Leaving uncompleted tasks in your mind leads to a cluttered and unfocused mind. Don’t leave things half finished.

Want Progress? Then Plan.

• Built In Milestones: With my new project (more on that later), the first thing I did was make a 3 page pdf of what I want it to accomplish, and how I’m going to implement each feature. When you have a plan to reference, measuring your progress is so easy. You don’t have to come up with abstract metrics of success, you’ve either checked the box or you haven’t.

• Still Leave Room For Change: When making a plan you have to leave room for growth and unforeseen changes. Already, I’ve probably made 15 edits to the plan sheet in just a week of development. A good plan is a living and breathing thing. Recognize that your plan for the project is just as important as the project itself, and you’ll see better results.

🗞️ Planning Trips and Planning Apps

Making and executing plans, for fun and progress.

This past weekend, me and a few friends made our way to the beautiful canals and bustling bike lanes of Amsterdam.

As always, navigating a brand new country was a bit stressful. Figuring out what to do and how to get around is always anxiety inducing. To combat this, I’ve done my best to plan out our trips before we leave, and it feels uncannily similar to figuring out an app design or business proposal.

Everything I’ve talked about on Launch Letter, including the newsletter itself, has been a result of a plan. At the start of April, I wanted a creative outlet for my journey through the computer science world. So I started this newsletter.

Out of my first few projects (and trips) the ones that have turned out the best so far are the ones that had the best plans. Yet, this doesn’t mean blocking out every minute of every day. With my travel, I’ve tried my best to split my time between scheduled events and freely exploring with both having their upsides and drawbacks.

Building projects is no different. You have to be willing to hunker down and grind out some work, but you can’t stifle your creativity either. Focused work doesn’t mean a whole lot if what you’re working on something that isn’t meaningful. On the flip side, trying to implement features as you think of them never goes well.

Finding the right balance between those two is extremely valuable. That’s where a plan document comes in. It helps maintain consistency while also allowing some breathing room for creativity. Simply writing down a page or two about who the product is for, what its trying to achieve, and a potential tech stack makes life so much easier.

So before you fire up VSCode prepared to make the next Facebook, take a moment, breathe, and plan it out first.

✅ Goal Progress

This last week studying abroad in Europe has been a bit more hectic (and less productive) than the last. Day trips around Spain and a weekend in Amsterdam made it tough to make more headway on my goals, but I did what I could.

First up is a new project I started. It doesn’t have a name yet, but the idea is an interactive virtual space to spend time with loved ones while you’re far away from them. The vision is a virtual home where you can play games, decorate the house, and hang out. I’ve planned it all out and have a very early version with the frontend on Netlify, backend on Redner, and a database with MongoDB.

I also have some more client work with the cleaning business coming soon, so expect to hear more about that.

Finally, I kept a more consistent online presence both on Twitter and TikTok. Making short form content on TikTok has been pretty engaging and I want to get more consistent with it. Hopefully that can draw more people to Launch Letter!