Planning horizons

Two chronic errors in roadmapping, and both are cheap to fix:

1. Planning deeper than the decision requires. Past a certain depth, extra planning changes nothing about what you do on Monday. That work is spend, not rigour.
2. Leaving the discount rate implicit. Every argument about short-term versus long-term is an argument about a discount factor that nobody has written down. Write it down and the argument usually resolves in a minute.

The organising principle is receding horizon planning: plan to depth d, execute the first step, then replan. You are not committing to the plan. You are using the plan to choose the next action.

Workflow