Planning For Friction: How to Set Up Your Year When You Know It Won't Be Smooth

You know your year won't be smooth. So why plan like it will be?

In this episode, I break down my 2026 planning strategy - not rigid annual goals, but quarterly focus that adapts to reality. Drawing from competitive powerlifting training, I share why backward planning works, how to maintain agency when life gets chaotic, and why 90-day sprints beat 12-month marathons.

What You'll Learn:

Why structure creates agency (not rigidity) and the neuroscience of locus of control
The powerlifting method: backward planning from specific outcomes
Where to focus vs. where to allow variety - and why this matters for your brain
Why quarterly reassessment beats rigid annual planning
My Q1 2026 focus: Political voice acting and the strategy behind it
How to choose YOUR Q1 focus (with examples)

Free Download: Quarterly Focus Planner

Research Cited: Amar, I.B., et al. (2023). The relationship between locus of control and pre-competitive anxiety. Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1227571

Episode Callbacks: Episodes 5 (Decision Fatigue), 6 (Dopamine), 7 (Rewiring for Resilience)

Your Q1 Challenge: Before January 15, pick ONE concrete, measurable focus for your Q1. Work backward to weekly actions. Execute for 90 days. Reassess for Q2.

Contact: marco@thecognitiveperformer.com

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(17)

The Illusion of Competence: Why Rereading Isn't Working

Picture the Apple logo. Now tell me which side the bite is on.Most people can't, and that's not a memory problem. It's a learning problem, and the difference between the two matters more than you'd th...

1 Sep 17min

The Tenacity Structure: How Doing Hard Things Builds a Harder Brain

Admiral McRaven told 8,000 graduates to make their beds. Most people heard a productivity tip. This episode is about what he was actually describing without knowing it.There's a structure in your brai...

1 Jul 14min

You Didn't Lose Your Creativity. You Trained Yourself Away From It.

Most adults believe their creativity faded somewhere between childhood and now. The neuroscience says something different. You didn't lose it. You trained yourself away from it. And that distinction m...

1 Jun 23min

Rewiring for the AI Age

This is the final episode of our AI and the Brain series. We've covered what AI does to your brain. This episode is about what YOU do. How do you actually thrive in this world? What makes human cognit...

1 Mai 19min

The Verification Tax & Attention Hijacking

Your brain evolved to trust what it sees. For millions of years, that worked. Now? Deepfakes, synthetic media, AI-generated everything. That instinct gets you fooled.This is Episode 3 of our AI and th...

1 Apr 14min

Cognitive Offloading - The Tradeoffs

Last month we explored agency - how AI doesn't take anything from you, you give it away. This episode goes deeper into the mechanism: what actually happens in your brain when you delegate cognitive ta...

1 Mar 12min

AI Isn't Coming For Anything - It's Your Responsibility

AI is about to become invisible - like electricity. And when that happens, we'll stop examining what it's doing to how we think, work, and develop skills.This is the first episode in a multi-part seri...

1 Feb 15min