natural-planning

name	natural-planning
description	Natural Planning Model for teams and individuals. Six timed stages (Purpose 45s · Principles 45s · Vision 2.5min · Brainstorm 3min · Organize 4min · Next Actions 1min) that turn any fuzzy project into a recording-ready plan in under 12 minutes. Based on David Allen and Ed Lamont's work. Invoke on demand with a project name, or run it on repeat against active projects in your backlog.

Natural Planning Model — Team & Project Skill

Apply the Natural Planning Model to any project, decision, initiative, offer, or strategic question in under 12 minutes. Based on David Allen's original model and the team adaptation in Allen & Lamont's book Team.

When to run this skill

• A new project is entering the backlog and needs structure before it gets green-lit.
• A stalled initiative needs a planning reset.
• A team meeting needs a shared planning surface instead of a status-update spiral.
• A founder is in their own head about a decision and needs a disciplined thinking pass.
• Weekly cadence — apply it to the top 3-5 active projects to keep them sharp.

The six stages and why the timings matter

Stage	Time	Purpose
Purpose	0:45	Why this matters. The real one, not the vanity one.
Principles	0:45	The standards and filters that govern how we will do this.
Vision	2:30	What "wildly successful" looks, sounds, and feels like.
Brainstorm	3:00	Every idea, no filter. Count pools, not names.
Organize	4:00	Cluster, sequence, allocate. This is where most teams lose integrity.
Next Actions	1:00	The first physical move, owner-assigned, date-stamped.

Total: ~11 minutes per cycle. The clock is not suggestion. The clock is the discipline that keeps the stages from cannibalizing each other.

Inputs

When invoked, the skill takes one of:

• A project name or short phrase (e.g. "Fill 15 certification seats by June 30")
• A decision in front of the operator (e.g. "Raise prices on the flagship offer")
• An offer, initiative, or strategic question from a backlog

If no argument is provided, the skill scans the operator's active backlog (e.g. project list, sprint dashboard, weekly priorities doc) and offers to apply the model to the top 3-5 items.

Execution

Step 0 — Set the clock

Announce the project at the top of the output. Start the stopwatch conceptually (the stages are time-boxed; enforce them in your own writing by not letting any section bloat).

Step 1 — Purpose (0:45)

Answer: Why does this matter? What happens if we do this? What happens if we don't? Keep it to 2-4 lines. The real motivation, not the PR version. If there is no real motivation, the project dies here.

Step 2 — Principles (0:45)

Answer: What are the standards and constraints that govern how we do this? Principles often reveal themselves in what annoys the operator. "I keep wanting to lower the bar to hit the number" is a principle-violation signal.

Examples of principles that surface often:

• Only qualified inbound. No cold sells.
• Price is a filter, not a negotiation.
• One owner per stage. No collective accountability.
• Zero placeholder data. Verified inputs only.

Step 3 — Vision (2:30)

Answer: If this is wildly successful, what does it look, sound, and feel like on a specific date? Include sensory detail. The feeling matters as much as the number. Quiet, loud, proud, relieved — name it.

Constraints:

• Name the date.
• Name the numbers.
• Name the feeling.
• Name who is in the room and what they are doing.

Step 4 — Brainstorm (3:00)

Answer: Every idea, option, path, and resource without filtering. Rule: count pools, not individual names. Ten pools of twenty each beats a list of twenty individuals and a promise to "find more."

Stop when pools converge or when the clock hits 3:00. Teams that spin past 3:00 are not brainstorming, they are avoiding Organize.

Step 5 — Organize (4:00)

Answer: What do we keep, how do we sequence, who owns what? This is where teams lose integrity.

Produce a simple organizing structure:

• Table: Pool | Plausible yield | Window (weeks) | Owner
• Double-count rule: if you need X closes, pipeline must be 2X conversations.
• Sequence front-loads the warmest pool. Cold pools come later.

Step 6 — Next Actions (1:00)

Answer: What is the first physical action, who owns it, when does it ship?

If Next Actions takes more than one minute, the Organize step was weak. That is the single most reliable diagnostic in the model.

Rules:

• 3-7 Next Actions maximum.
• Each has an owner (named person, not "we" or "the team").
• Each has a date (today, tomorrow, a named weekday, not "soon" or "this sprint").
• Each is a physical next move, not a deliverable or a project.

Output format

The skill writes the applied plan to the operator's planning surface (Obsidian vault, Notion page, plain markdown file, whatever is configured). The output uses the exact section headings above and preserves the timing annotations in parens. This keeps the discipline visible in the output for reviewers.

Posted summary (optional, one-liner to team chat):

"Natural Planning applied to [project] — vision dated [date], [N] pools, [N] next actions owned by [names]. Full plan: [link]."

Weekly cadence (optional scheduled mode)

When scheduled (e.g. every Monday morning), the skill:

1. Reads the operator's top 3-5 active projects from the configured backlog.
2. Runs the six-stage model on each.
3. Writes one applied-plan doc per project.
4. Posts a single weekly digest with each project's Next Actions.
5. Flags projects where Purpose is unclear or Principles are being violated — these are the projects at risk.

This turns Natural Planning from a one-time workshop into a weekly quality gate. Projects that cannot pass the 11-minute test do not belong in the active column.

What to watch for while applying the model

These are the high-signal moments operators should notice when running it:

1. Principles is harder than Vision. Counter-intuitive. Principles surface under pressure; Vision is easier to narrate.
2. Brainstorm forces you to count pools, not names. The 3-minute cap does this automatically. If you are listing individual people or tasks, zoom up.
3. Organize is where teams lose integrity. They have seen the whole picture and now they are afraid to cut. Stay hard on the sequencing.
4. If Next Actions takes more than 1 minute, you did not Organize properly. The fix is always upstream, never in the NA step itself.
5. The clock is the model. The timings are not arbitrary. They are the discipline that keeps the stages from cannibalizing each other. Remove the clock and the framework collapses into a generic brainstorm.

Sources and attribution

This skill is an operational wrapper around David Allen's Natural Planning Model (1980s-2000s) and the team adaptation in David Allen & Edward Lamont's book Team: Getting Things Done Together (2024). Full credit to their work.

• Book: Team: Getting Things Done with Others by David Allen and Edward Lamont
• Framework origin: Getting Things Done by David Allen
• GTD episodes on the model: gettingthingsdone.com/podcasts

This skill adds timing discipline, weekly-cadence automation, and an applied-example library on top of the original model.