Success is a combination of focus and motivation, at least according to part one, initially these two are the best combination we can have for launching a new endeavour or projetc and having a reasonable chance of success. Those who feel that success can be best achieved by action rather than planning have a good part of the formula already. Indeed, those who focus on planning are often seen to fail. Yet, planning is vital.

Action without planning will ultimately lead to unecessary defeats. The key is to not let planning and paperwork take over from important action (the result of motivation). We must find motivation to do the bare minimum of planning and do it well. The key here is to do the least required to ensure success. Lists, goals and schedules are really all that is needed, ticking off tasks as you complete them. Planning is not strictly just planning, once your plan is in motion you can really consider the paperwork project management.

Project management is an art form in its self and more often than not it becomes bloated, unwieldy and difficult to handle. I would recommend donating no more than 10% of your time to project management once your project (whatever that might be) is off the ground.

Put simply project management should involve a set of goals or waypoints to be reached, a scehdule for their completion and contingency plans should things fall behind schedule. Once a project is running all management really boils down to schedules – making sure things get done and sorting out things that are taking too long.

So, if there is one key aspect of planning before an event, it is a series of goals, and during the event it is the recording and managing of those goals that are taking up a disproportionate amount of time. In essence, to succeed at project management you must develop a fine sense of when to let a component of a project go, without sentimentality.

The success formula rests on motivation and focus governed by a series of checks and balances that attempt to deal with the unexpected. Never fail to plan for the unexpected as it will test you more than you can imagine.