The Power of Project Planning
7 Sept 2018 · 15 min
In this episode of The Brendon Show, Brendon Burchard explains how effective project planning hinges on three core practices: making your projects visible to others for accountability, breaking projects into clear, manageable phases, and delegating tasks strategically. He begins by urging listeners to tell friends, family, and colleagues about the projects they’re working on, arguing that external interest creates a powerful accountability loop that boosts commitment. He then introduces the concept of "phase ability," illustrating how any project—like writing a book—can be divided into sequential phases (writing, editing, proposal, launch, etc.) to transform vague ideas into concrete steps and generate frequent small wins. For overwhelming to‑do lists, he recommends grouping items into a few project buckets, ordering those buckets, and tackling them one at a time, which prevents random, demotivating work. Brendon outlines a dual‑accountability system: first, self‑accountability reinforced by publicly sharing the project; second, external accountability through regular check‑ins (e.g., friends calling each Friday). He then shifts to delegation, advocating that you delegate 100 % of tasks you can, and do so early, to avoid psychological ownership that makes you cling to work. He stresses identifying core skills you must retain, recognizing unique contributions, and then offloading everything else, while ensuring the delegate is a realistic, reliable partner who can give back some responsibility. Delegation, he notes, should be a balancing, back‑and‑forth process rather than a one‑way assignment, preserving team well‑being and preventing burnout. Throughout, Brendon blends personal anecdotes with actionable steps, reinforcing that structured planning, accountability, and smart delegation are essential for high performance.
Chapters
People should know the projects that you're working on. Go tell everybody in your life that you're working on this project. And I mean that. Why? Because they'll also ask you, how's that project going? If no one's asking you, you're doing it wrong. You need your family and your friends or somebody around you to be cheering you on. Have you ever noticed when someone takes interest in what you're doing, it almost doubles your commitment for what you're doing. Like, when someone notices that you're doing something, they say, hey, good job. I really like that. You go, yeah. And next time you go to do it, you do it with a little more oomph. We need people to see the projects we're working on and be aware of them. Hey, my friends. It's Brendon Burchard.
And welcome to another episode of the Brendon show.
Phase ability. Okay, phase ability. When I'm looking at all these projects, what I like to know is can that project be kind of like phase one and phase two? Meaning can I, like, break it down into work efforts? Like, here's one major set of activities that I'll do first, and then here's the other major set of activities that I'll do second. Like, for example, I love book projects like writing books. It's so easy because it's easy for me to break it down into phase abilities. I can compartmentalize or chunk the activities to make it easier for me to manage. Like, you know, phase ability. First, write the chapters. Okay, great. That's easy. That's phase one. Write the chapters. Okay. Phase two. Now I get to move on to editing to make the book come together. Awesome. And in that editing, I'll write the introduction. I like it. Phase three, put the proposal together now to go out and sell the book or to figure out the self publishing or get a major publisher for it. Great. Phase four, plan and prepare book launch. Ooh, I like this even better. Phase five. Now launch book. It's nice when it can go through a process like that. It's an easy thing to conceptualize. Right? Meaning it becomes a real project versus an esoteric thing. Let me give you the opposite example. Something that doesn't have feasibility. What doesn't have feasibility? One day I want to be happy. Oh, God, you're screwed. What does that mean? Right. You have to bust it down a little bit so it's tangible things you can do. You need to pick projects that you can tangibly break into chunks to achieve it. And if you can, you don't have a project, you have a concept. And a lot of people have concepts, hopes, dreams, but no projects. And that's why they're miserable. Because there's no tactical thing they can be doing and tracking and measuring to achieve it. Now, believe me, I am built more as a concept, free spirit person. But I recognize that that was a weakness for me too. It's great on stage, it's great training, it's great in the moments of creativity, but it wasn't great in making money. It wasn't great in building a business, it wasn't great in advancing my career. It wasn't great in serving more people. It wasn't great in scaling, it wasn't great in moving past my dreams. It wasn't great on bringing on more people. That wasn't great. I had to realize, God, if I don't get organized and bust things down into phases, I just won't do them. And you know what, if you just have a project with all these activities in it and, and it's like a project and there's 500 to do lists, right? I promised to talk to you about what happens when you have 100 to do lists or 100 to do items. The first thing I need to do, if you have 100 to do items and they're due ASAP, I need you to look at all those and find and bust them into projects like move them into buckets. Because out of those hundred things, there's probably three major projects there. It looks like 100 different things, but they probably align up pretty good into one, two or three, four buckets. And now once you get them into one, two or three or four buckets, you say, okay, which bucket first? And instead of trying to do all the tasks at the same time, you do bucket number one, then bucket two, then bucket three. Even if that's done over a three day period, a seven day period, or a three month period. Just take all your items, take out your 100 to do items, put them in buckets of interest or issues, and then once you have that busted up, now you order the buckets. And now it doesn't feel like you're working randomly. Because you know what, Working randomly is miserable for people. They hate it. They finish the day and they're like, I didn't get anything done. But if you know you're working in this bucket of to do items and you can finish it, your brain, you know what, your brain loves phases. If you have a project of 100 items and you're just slogging at the hundred items forever. Your brain's like, this sucks. But if. And within that project, you have wins, like, things to celebrate. Phase one, you did it. Good job. Phase two, did it. Good job. You know what? Your brain needs those good job, kids. Your job needs the phases. It's the small wins on the long journey that we need to keep our confidence and our joy and our motivation alive. Right? So you got to bust out that project in little phases to let yourself win, but. But also to organize yourself. So it's a project management approach to just phase things out. I hope that helps. So for those with a to do list of 100 items, I want you to put them in buckets and then order the buckets. And I don't care how fast you gotta achieve the buckets. It might be two buckets a day, three over a period, a week or three. Doesn't matter. Just get at it. Okay, next up, Big other item, accountability. Okay? Two levels of accountability for each project. Okay, Two levels of accountability for each project. One is making yourself accountable to the project. Okay? So the first thing you have to do to do that is go tell everybody in your life that you're working on this project. And I mean that everybody knew in my immediate circle that I was working on this podcast and that this podcast was gonna be a big thing my team and I were talking about. This is gonna be a big podcast. You know, weeks and months ago, this is like, with everybody in the last two weeks, they're like, geez, Brennan's working on this podcast. They're like, comedian, can I get podcast? I'm working on a podcast. And you have to push people away. Like, people should know the projects that you're working on. Why? Because they'll also ask you, how's that project going? If no one's asking you about the projects you were working on, you're doing it wrong. You're suffering in silence. You are toiling in a vacuum, and no one wants that. You need your family and your friends or somebody around you to be cheering you on. Because without people knowing, if no one's ever asking you how things are going, you kind of stop doing the things that you were doing. But when other people take interest, it almost isn't it. Have you ever noticed when someone takes interest in what you're doing, it almost doubles your commitment for what you're doing? Like, when someone notices that you're doing something, they say, hey, good job. I really like that. You go, yeah. And next time you go to do it, you do it. With a little more oomph. We need people to see the projects we're working on and be aware of them. And we need to set up accountability processes to make that happen. So maybe you tell your three best friends, hey, can I ask a favor for the next four weeks, would you call me every Friday and bug me and ask me how this project is going? That's all I want you to do. Just call me every Friday and ask how it's going. Could you do that a favor? I can't tell you. Many times I asked my friends to do that. They probably hate it by now. I'm like, can you just call me on Friday and tell me, ask me how it's going? They're like, okay, why? I'm like, accountability. Because when my friends are asking me how I'm doing, I feel bad if I don't get some progress that week. Sometimes we need that. The second aspect of accountability is the delegation piece. And this is one of the other things I promised to talk with you about. What do you delegate? How to delegate and when is an important topic, isn't it? And what I would recommend you to do is this. Delegate 100% of everything that you can delegate. It is the boldest and the scariest and the hardest thing to do, and it will make you three times more effective at everything. I want you to say everything outside of my immediate concern in which I need to develop skill set or I need to specifically contribute. I'm going to delegate first, foremost, and fast. Most people wait too long to delegate and. And then what happens is the longer you wait to delegate, the more you're doing it, the more psychologically your mind tricks you and says, you're the one that has to do this. Oh, yeah, baby, you're a genius. No one else on the planet could do it. Just you. And you start believing it. And then you don't delegate it. Because guess what? The longer you do something, the more you have what's called psychological ownership. Even if it's something you totally don't have to do. Your brain and your body got in a rhythm and said, that's mine. That's what I do. Even if it's completely nonsensical for you to do anymore. And I know this. I've been trapped many times in my careers of thinking I had to do something. And usually it's not true. And almost always when I get behind on a project, I go, oh my God, why didn't I delegate this earlier? I'm so dumb. So I'm letting You know, I also do these dumb things. So I really want you to understand the secret here, I said is this. First, identify what are the skills that you need to have in your business or your career to make you good? So do the things that are necessary for you to be good. Second, what are the things that you can uniquely contribute? And then third, please delegate early, first, foremost, and fast. Really try. What's a hundred percent of this that I can give away to somebody else to do and keep them accountable to it. Whether that's meaning you hire that personal assistant this year, this is your year to hire that personal assistant or that team. Whether that's for you, you say, you know what? Here's a hundred things, husband, we need to sit down. And these are projects we agree on. This is what's important to our life. Right? This is where we're trying to go. Right? Okay, can you take all of these and just give all it to them? And they'll go, oh, my God, no. And then there'll be a bartering process where sometimes you can't delegate everything to somebody, but then they kind of take on some, they give some back to you. Does that make sense? And the people that I always say you want to delegate to, the best people to delegate to are the people when you delegate to them, they delegate some portion of it back to you. Those are the people you can distrust the most. If someone says, I'll do it all, usually that person is going to become overwhelmed, they're not going to get it done, and they're not going to be reliable. Because reliable people tend to be realistic people. Write that one down. Reliable people tend to be realistic people. So what they say is, they'll look at that huge list you gave them like, I can't possibly do that. Tell you what, could you do these five and I'll take these 10? And you'd be like, good person. I trust reliable people. Reliable people are realistic people. I love to give and delegate when somebody gives a little back. And that's what I want you to develop. True. And it's true. Especially if you're a small business owner or you have a team that, yeah, you could give everything to everybody. But you'll see, most of my team, I don't give everything to everybody to overwhelm them. And I try to take on an appropriate amount that I can do and give out as much as I can to others. And it's not always a perfect balance, but we try to find it so that people aren't up too late answering Emails or people aren't too late away from their family. But I'm just trying to say that give as much as you can and let them push back and find it and that will help you find the true thing. In other words, please don't think that delegation is the way they write about it in books or talk about it in videos where you just give it out and someone's supposed what you want. Delegation should be a back and forth where it finds this great balance of what they're doing and what you're doing. I want you to first try to think of what's 100% of what I can give away. But realize you're actually not going to be able to give it away because I mean, think about it as parenting. Wouldn't it be great to delegate all of parenting to your spouse? Awesome. You clean up the poop, you get all the food ready, you do all the shopping. And I know some of you have done all this and you've been allowed, allowed yourself to delegate that. You didn't set any boundaries. You're wiped out, beat up, tired, exhausted from having taken on too much. So for you, you also have to have the personal power to be realistic and say, I need some help here, mister. And that's really important. And I know many of you give me a double thumbs up and you've discovered this and you believe it too. So. And for those who haven't found that out, push back. Just because someone gives you something doesn't mean you have to accept it and do it. That's part of the personal accountability of making sure what we've chosen to do is feasible. Remember, we've got to make sure that once we've chosen the right things, we protect the right things by not taking on too much more. So there's a balance. I always want you to think delegation is a balancing process. It is not an assigning process. Write it down. Delegation is a balancing process, not an assigning process. Because one of the ways you achieve projects faster is you have people who like to work with you. And if all you ever do is you just assign, assign, assign. But you don't work with them to balance. They'll hate you, they'll leave you, and you'll be even more busy. Good leadership 101.
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