“Trying to pick the best investment before you’ve come up with a financial plan is like trying to decide whether to take a plane, train, or automobile on a trip before you’ve decided where you want to go.” – Carl Richards

In his Behavior Gap newsletter, Carl Richards shared the above image. It explains why a somewhat rational decision needs a plan and a process.

We are naturally offered a product by all those wanting to sell their product. It’s their part of the job. It’s less evident with platforms that provide us with access to a variety of products we are invited to choose from. They live with the dilemma that the product they sell is supposed to make the choice easy, but to make it valuable, they need to find a way to integrate the process of choosing, which they can’t do for us.

Our job is to learn how to choose. That is, to learn how we want to choose and why.

That is where having a plan and a process come into play.

It’s by establishing a plan that a more specific process comes into focus.

Having focused on a process, we’ll find ourselves constantly redefining it according to the needs described in the plan. Stepping into the selected process comes with a path to discovery that unfolds as we move through it.

The plan we established is a description of what we want, not a description of the product we are looking for. Without the process of choosing, we can’t know which product is the one we searched for. But as the process unfolds, it may impact our plan, transforming our idea of what we want.

Moving through a defined process is the work we do to translate our plan into steps we can make one after the other to answer all the questions that come up. Whatever question we can’t answer hints at the help we need or the research that still needs to be done.

It’s easier said than done, especially if we lack knowledge and expertise in the field.

We need to know that a process is there to allow an answer to emerge. We can’t know it beforehand.