Why Life Planning?

I know how to make things work, at work. You have a few goals, you put together your high level strategy, you survey the landscape, you figure out what you have to work with, and what you need to make happen, and what you need to acquire, you put together a rough timeframe when things happen, and you go to work. You set yourself up with a few key people to get the thing done, you make sure everyone knows what you're doing, why, and by when, and then you get your hands dirty. You plan a month, a week, a day, you put together the specific things you want to accomplish to move you towards the task, you figure out what you are going to measure and what you are going to observe when the thing you are trying to do is getting done. You do the work, and compare the outcome to what you wanted to happen and make adjustments along the way. And at the end, you have achieved something. Finally you take a look at what you've done, and start the whole thing over again.

I don't approach life the same way. And in fact I've had conversations with my wife where her obvious frustration and confusion over my lazy mishandling of my non-work life bubbles over. "I don't know how you do what you do at work, but can't do this simple thing at home. It doesn't make sense!" "That's different" I'd object, "work is different. It's more concrete. It's simpler. It's straightforward. I know how to do things at work!"

I finally realized that's a load of crap.

So, life planning. Applying some of the same principles, strategies, and tactics to life that I do everyday at work. Taking the same kind of care with planning out the development of my relationship with my wife (of 11 years) that I take with the development of a new engineering intern. Working with our home finances in a similar way I might work with my software budgets. Seems obvious, in retrospect.