Building an app. Raising a kid. Buying a home. Training a dog. Writing a book. Completing a semester. Saving for a vacation. Our lives are full of goals so big that sometimes we don't even think of them as goals. They're just life.

Print and digital calendars are designed to see and understand the short term. Because of this, they fail us terribly for long-term planning and thinking. The average person has no good way to see more than a month at a time.

Without a clear and specific plan, it's less likely your goal will be achieved. But how do you make a plan? What's the first thing you need to do today? And tomorrow? And after that? 

It's easy to stop doing something boring or unpleasant when you can't see the larger goal it contributes to. Goals are full of boring and unpleasant things. Remembering their purpose makes them endurable.

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. How do you run a marathon? One step at a time. Breaking something that seems impossible into small achievable pieces makes it possible.

On a long enough timeline, the situation will change and the plan will have to change. This isn't a failure of planning. This is a reality of discovering and encountering unknown unknowns. No plan can anticipate everything, but some plans can adapt to the new reality.

Enterprise planning software is great for large, complex plans with dozens to thousands of people working on them. It's like a jumbo jet. Great for flying to another continent. But what about everyday people who need to get to the other side of town? Or a few blocks away? Where's the skateboard, bicycle, and electric car of planning?

The separation of work and life calendars is a noble idea, but life doesn't happen 5-9. Life events inevitably land in the work calendar and make it that much harder to see what's going on in time.

It's difficult to see the multiple goals, timelines, and activities going on in a life, let alone multiple lives. There needs to be a better way to see everyone's streams, how they intersect, and how they can balance.