[sei]

[the genius filter]

How to Make a Plan That Doesn’t Fall Apart

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In the late 1990s, David Allen noticed a pattern.

He saw that ambitious people with big plans were stalling out left and right. They had the strength to motivate themselves, build, and act, but there was a fundamental weakness in how their plans were designed.

Most were too vague to act on, too rigid to handle setbacks, or too dependent on the absolute exhaustion of one person. Inevitably, these plans broke down.

Allen saw a solution: Don't give up your dreams, don't resign to a smaller goal, just build better systems.

So he built Getting Things Done, a method that turns vague intentions into concrete steps anchored to daily life. It's a framework designed to survive distraction, stress, and setbacks.

His insight was simple: you don’t rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the strength of your systems.

This week, we’re filtering for the kind of genius who knows that a plan isn’t built for when things go right. It’s built to keep going when they don’t.

[the spark]

From Chaos to Clarity

Before David Allen created Getting Things Done, his own life was scattered.

He drifted through jobs as a karate teacher, waiter, and travel agent, collecting stress and unfinished projects at every stop.

He noticed that each role carried the same problem: work piled up faster than he could keep track of it. To stay afloat, he began experimenting with ways to capture his commitments and compartmentalize his priorities. He started designing routines that freed his mind from the constant pressure of remembering.

Over time, these experiments evolved into a system. Instead of holding tasks in his head, he wrote them down. Instead of vague goals, he defined the next visible action. And instead of relying on willpower, he built reminders into his daily flow.

The results didn’t just steady him, they spread. In the 1980s, he began teaching his methods in the budding seminar circuit, showing corporate audiences how to cut through mental clutter. By the late 1990s, executives were seeking him out for a framework that worked when their own plans kept failing.

When Getting Things Done was published in 2001, it codified what he had been practicing for decades: that order, not inspiration, is the foundation of execution. Allen had turned personal chaos into a system that reshaped how the world thinks about planning.

[the science]
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Why Plans Fall Apart

Psychologists have long studied why good intentions collapse. The gap between what we plan and what we do is so common it has a name: the intention–behavior gap.

In the 1990s, NYU psychologist Peter Gollwitzer found a way to close it. His research on implementation intentions showed that people who pre-decided their response to obstacles—using the simple formula If X happens, then I’ll do Y—were far more likely to follow through.

In one landmark study, participants who created these “if–then” plans were up to three times more successful at completing their goals than those who relied on general intentions. And it had nothing to do with motivation; the key was structure.

Gollwitzer’s sampled data proves what David Allen discovered in practice: plans stick when they anticipate friction and provide a clear next move, leaving less to chance and less to willpower.

[the takeaways]

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1) Lock in Your True Target​
​Vague goals collapse. Write down one specific outcome with a clear deadline. Make it doable and undeniable.

2) Script the Setbacks​
​Plans break from friction. Chart out the obstacles you know you’ll face, then pre-decide the response: If X happens, then I’ll do Y.

3) Anchor Actions to Routines​
​Don’t wait on willpower. Tie the new behavior to something you already do and let the pairing take the punch out of a new habit.

4) Build Reminders
​Memory is inconsistent, fading, and selective. Use hard cues like notes, alarms, or check-ins to keep the plan alive when motivation runs thin.

5) Measure Consistency, Not Perfection​
​There is no perfect plan. Every journey suffers from missteps. Build a structure that carries you forward even when you stumble, and above all else, keep moving forward.