[imranq]

Advice from my physics professor: make a detailed plan and then discard the plan and do what you feel.

This doesn't mean the plan was unnecessary...rather the plan carves out the neural pathways in your mind. The feeling part is important too since if I am so rigid then I am going to be crushed by the randomness of life.

[LVB]

"Plans are nothing; planning is everything." - Dwight D. Eisenhower

I used to hear this a lot from one of my better bosses. I agree with it. It is, however, important to capture "planning". Any form is fine, whether scribbles or a list or a picture of a whiteboard. Trying to organize the raw info was usually a waste of time, but having it accessible as a reference wasn't.

[taude]

I think there's value in relieving the mind from holding on to the context by writing it down, even if your intent of execution changes. The process of writing it down releases my mind from thinking about it.

[tedmiston]

What you said — writing it down to free your attention — is one of the main points from Getting Things Done.

They have a good lists of mind sweep / brain-dump triggers [1] that I think benefit everyone even without ever doing everything one writes down.

[1]: http://gettingthingsdone.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Mind...

[travis_d_ray]

The first casualty of any war is the plan.

[braymundo]

As Mike Tyson put it: "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."

[gspetr]

He who fails to plan, plans to fail.

[stagbeetle]

A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.

General George S. Patton, Jr.

No plan survives contact with the enemy.

Unknown

[jachee]

A man, a plan, a canal: Panama.

--Palindrome

[cJ0th]

That's what I arrived at as well. However, sometimes it's good to make a new plan after a while and then discard that one as well and so one. One could call it "iterative creation of intention".

[commenttolearn]

Exactly. This is also the conclusion I got to. Detailed planning is great in order to tell your mind the direction you want to go to but then it's important to discard it so that you don't get lost in the details or feel frustrated because you are unable to follow every step of it, which may lead to demotivation.

[tablet]

This strategy is an epic win. It totally resonates with my experience.

[tajen]

"Write a business plan to prove the idea is feasible, then throw it away".