Two weeks before the trip, the campervan was a write-off

It was meant to be the big father-and-son holiday. Possibly the last in this constellation, before my son reaches an age where he has other plans. Everything prepared, route roughly in my head, dates fixed. Then the campervan was written off.

The first reaction was not a methodical one. Frustration, a bit of panic, and that sense of standstill in which you think a great deal and decide nothing.

What got me out of it was a look at my own project setup. And there I noticed that in the entire plan the word campervan did not appear a single time. The purpose I had written down was time with my son and having an adventure. The campervan had never been the goal, it was a means of transport.

We ended up travelling the north with rucksacks. Looking back, better than the original plan.

Why that was not luck

The reason I did not spend weeks stuck is banal: the purpose was written down. Not in my head but legible, in a place I looked at during a moment of panic.

Keep the purpose in your head only and you confuse it with the route. And when the route collapses, it feels as if the goal is gone. That happens in companies every week. The supplier drops out, the software does not deliver what was promised, a key person resigns. And then people try to rescue the plan instead of asking which other route serves the same purpose.

The test is simple and uncomfortable: look at your project names. Is there an outcome there, or a vehicle?

“Roll out Salesforce” is a vehicle. “New website” is a vehicle. “Plan campervan holiday” is a vehicle. When the vehicle is in the project name, you committed to a route before you phrased the goal, and nobody on the team knows what the effort is for.

The five steps, in the order your head uses anyway

The Natural Planning Model is called that because your brain approaches projects in this order by default. Deciding to eat out with friends, everybody does it without thinking: first the purpose (we want a nice evening), then the picture (Italian, not too loud), then the ideas (three places come to mind), then the organising (book a table, who picks up whom), then the first action (call).

1. Purpose and principles. Why are we doing this, and what are the standards? The purpose is the one sentence that still holds when the plan tips over.

The principles are the underrated part. The most useful question for them: what would have to happen for this project to drive me up the wall? The answers are your rules. “I don’t want to be packing the night before.” “Nobody on the team works weekends for this.” “We want to enjoy this” is a perfectly legitimate standard, including at work.

2. Vision. What does the outcome look like when it has gone well? Not as a target but as a picture. What do I see, what do I hear, what are people saying?

That sounds more esoteric than it is. The practical benefit: while the picture is missing, nobody can judge whether an idea is any good. Teams working without a vision debate every detail from first principles.

3. Brainstorming. Everything out of your head, without judgement. The most common mistake is gathering and evaluating at the same time. You then brake yourself at every third thought, and the good ideas that sound stupid at first never reach the paper.

Paper usually works better than a tool for this, because no structure is imposed. In a team: everybody writes silently for themselves first, then you collect. Otherwise whoever speaks fastest prevails, rather than whoever has the best thought.

4. Organising. Only now do you sort. What belongs together, what depends on what, what is sequential and what runs in parallel.

5. Next actions. The very first physical action you can take now. A project with several strands can have several, one per strand, but each has to be concrete. “Research” is not an action. “Pull three suppliers out of the trade directory” is.

The most important point: you do not need this for every project

This is where most attempts fail. Try to force your sixty open projects through five stages and you will stop after the fourth and conclude the model is bureaucracy.

The vast majority of projects need exactly two things: a phrased outcome and a defined next action. That keeps them running. The full model is the tool for the projects that feel vague, where nothing is moving, or where something has broken.

You typically have two to five of those at any one time. For those, an hour is worth it.

Diagnosis: which step is it stuck on

When a project is stuck, the symptom tells you which step is missing.

What you notice	What is missing
Endless debate, every decision reopened	Purpose
Everyone is working, nobody knows if the outcome is enough	Vision
The feeling of forgetting something important	Brainstorming, not everything is out
Plenty of ideas, no recognisable route	Organising
It feels clear, but nothing moves	Next action

From which follows a rule of thumb that almost always holds: if the project needs more clarity, go up, to purpose and vision. If it needs more movement, go down, to the next action. The middle, brainstorming and organising, is rarely the problem.

The unnatural route most people take

The counterpart to the natural model is not worse planning but none at all. You start straight at step five, work through action after action and hope the meaning emerges along the way.

That works for small undertakings and, on large ones, is the reason projects suddenly turn heavy in the third month. Not because people have become less capable, but because nobody can say any more what this is for, and motivated people depend on exactly that.

Anyone who has ever asked in a company why a rollout is actually happening knows the answers. Four different ones, from five people.

Where it typically fails

The purpose stays in your head. A purpose that is not written down does not help in a crisis, because in a crisis you do not think calmly. Write it down, attach it to the project, done.

The why is stated once on the kickoff slide and never again. After three months half the team no longer knows it, and the new people never heard it.

Brainstorming with simultaneous evaluation. Costs you half the ideas, and the more interesting half.

The model gets applied to everything. A clarifying tool then becomes a ritual, and nobody keeps rituals up for long.

Common questions

What is the Natural Planning Model in GTD?

A planning sequence in five steps: purpose and principles, vision, brainstorming, organising, next actions. It is called natural because the brain approaches projects in this order by itself, as long as it is not prevented from doing so.

Do I have to go through all five steps for every project?

No. Most projects only need a phrased outcome and a next action. The full model is meant for projects that are stuck, feel vague, or whose plan has tipped over.

What do I do when a project is stuck?

Check whether clarity or movement is missing. For missing clarity, go back to purpose and vision; for missing movement, define the next physical action. The symptom shows the direction.

Why should I write down a project’s purpose?

Because it is the only part of the plan that still holds when the route collapses. Keep the purpose in your head only and you confuse it with the chosen route, and you consider the project failed when only the vehicle has dropped out.

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Take the project you least want to think about right now and write down in one sentence what it is for. If that sentence will not come to you, you know why it feels the way it does.