How a Planner Travels, by Jo Jeong-hui

2024-03-31

Planning can be hard to explain to someone who has never had to turn a vague idea into a project. Jo Jeong-hui approaches it through something easier to picture: taking a trip.

Jo describes herself as someone who wants to make things the world needs. When the book appeared, she was a working planner pursuing doctoral studies in user experience at Yonsei University. She had also written travel books about Spain and Laos.

What do we mean by planning?

This short book is easy to pick up. For a detailed treatment of proposals and the difference between solving a defined problem and testing a hypothesis, Gil Yeong-ro’s What Is Planning? makes a useful companion.

What does a planner do differently when traveling?

The first two of the book’s four chapters describe how Jo prepares for a trip, finds and organizes information, and recognizes something she might later use in her work.

The third revisits places she remembers. Those memories often come from getting to participate in something herself.

The last chapter turns to the attitudes and habits that carry over into planning.

How a planner travels

Jo says she does not usually write reports on books she reads. She does pay close attention to the contents page, which shows her how the author has arranged the material and helps her recall it afterward.

This book’s contents page does both jobs well.

Contents

  1. How a planner travels
    1. Find out as much as you can about the destination.
    2. Start somewhere.
    3. What makes a trip meaningful?
    4. Find the frame that serves you best.
    5. Get involved in the experience.
    6. Preserve the moments you record.
    7. Keep asking questions.
  2. A planner’s habits
    1. Planning begins by caring who it is for.
    2. Learn a little of the local language.
    3. Notice which point of view a source represents.
    4. Use data to identify trends.
    5. Talk to people about what they want.
    6. Set aside time to sort and discard material.
    7. Use social media to see what people are looking for.
  3. What a planner notices
    1. A bookstore with a point of view: Altair
    2. Christiania, a place for free spirits
    3. The quiet town of Bacharach
    4. Lisbon’s streets, where art is part of daily life
    5. A museum in Cologne that puts an experience on display
    6. Handmade things in Nuremberg
    7. El Raval’s transformation into an arts neighborhood
    8. A former bullring turned cultural center
    9. The future of mobility, glimpsed on a trip through Europe
  4. A planner’s approach
    1. Follow a keyword as far as it takes you.
    2. Leave a record of what you made.
    3. Keep going through criticism.
    4. Take a break when your motivation runs out.
    5. Watch for the right moment.
    6. Give value more weight than immediate gain.
    7. Think about whom you have to persuade.
    8. Make a plan you can put into action.

Putting a plan to work

Jo emphasizes what happens after a plan is written. A photograph, a video, or a recording has more chance of being useful later if you organize it while you remember why you kept it.

She even saves receipts. A date, a price, or a store name can turn out to be the detail she needs.

Gathering material before leaving

Jo collects travel ideas as she comes across them, from television, blogs, or Instagram. That way they are available when she has a reason to use them.

I also tend to save a little information for trips I have yet to take. What stood out to me was how deliberately Jo arranged hers.

Sources that help make sense of trends

Good questions on the road can come from following a subject before you leave. Jo describes several places to look.

  1. Search a consulting firm’s site for the subject you are following.
  2. Look for reports from securities firms, including the shorter summaries that help you orient yourself quickly.
  3. Check the programs of major trade fairs and academic conferences.

Consulting firms mentioned

  1. Bain & Company
  2. Boston Consulting Group
  3. McKinsey & Company

Trade fairs and conferences mentioned

  1. CES, a consumer technology trade show
  2. MWC, an exhibition and conference for the mobile industry
  3. IFA, the Berlin consumer electronics and home appliances fair

Resources for working with data

Jo uses Python to collect data and lists resources for people getting used to the tools.

  1. Codecademy www.codecademy.com Self-paced coding lessons
  2. Google’s Python Class https://developers.google.com/edu/python Lessons and videos that introduce the fundamentals
  3. 100 Practical Techniques for Data Analysis with Python, a book
  4. Word clouds www.wordclouds.com A visualization tool can help you see which terms occur frequently in a body of text.

How a plan becomes a project

Chapter 4 walks through a typical process. The following is a paraphrase of the main stages.

A project may move from defining the question through research, concept development, execution, prototyping, and validation.

  1. Define the purpose and the question. Ask why the project deserves time and money and what it needs to resolve.
  2. Research the conditions outside and inside the organization. Interview the people you expect to use the service, observe what they actually do, and find out where your team has room to act.
  3. Generate ideas once you understand the people the project is for. Group related ideas, combine or develop them, and ask people outside the team or specialists to help judge which ones are worth pursuing.
  4. Make the idea visible. A prototype can help people react to something concrete, and their feedback can guide the next revision.

The number of stages depends on what you are making, the time available, and the people involved. Jo offers the outline as something to adapt.

Learning to write proposals

Jo offers two exercises for people trying to understand how a clear proposal is put together.

  1. Study a well-written example by copying it out privately. Slowing down can make it easier to see how the author organizes information and chooses words. A colleague’s clearly written document can serve the same purpose as a published example.
  2. Rewrite a document by someone whose work you admire. If you have no example at work, try studying a startup pitch deck. A couple of examples you think through carefully can teach you more than a folder of references you barely read.

Making a proposal easy to read

Two people can tell the same travel story and hold their audience’s attention for very different lengths of time. The same is true of a proposal.

  1. Use images and tables where they help. A visual that supports a point can tell the reader where to pause instead of making them dig through a wall of text.
  2. Give the reader enough context. The name espinacas con garbanzos means more after a reader has a picture of Seville and knows the dish is made with chickpeas and spinach.
  3. Put the part readers are likely to care about near the beginning. Give them the main result or the most revealing example before working through the details.

The book begins with the pleasure of traveling, passes through the places Jo remembers most vividly, and ends at the desk where she turns what she noticed into a plan.

It is especially engaging on what a planner pays attention to away from work and how some of those observations find a use later.

The short chapters make it a good book to read a little at a time. The final pages are worth returning to when you have a proposal to write yourself.

Book details

How a Planner Travels

Author
Jo Jeong-hui
Published
December 10, 2020
ISBN13
9791189533465
View the book on YES24

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