Backward planning: a two-column template from goal to this week
Backward planning means starting from the finished result and asking, step by step, what must be true just before it, until you reach this week. The output is a two-column table, time before the goal and what must be true, whose first row tells you what to do now. It works best when the end state and your starting point are both written down precisely.
In this article · 8 sections
- What is backward planning?
- A backward planning example: a second coffee shop
- When the goal feels too big: plan backwards from ten
- A backward planning template you can copy
- The Bellman principle test: when reverse planning becomes real optimization
- Where planning backwards breaks
- The chapter that turns ambition into an assignment
- Published research
When you type an address into a navigation app, it does not guess where you are going. It knows where you are, it knows the destination, and it draws a route. Miss a turn and it does not lecture you about the past; it takes the spot where you are standing now and calculates a fresh route from there. Chapter 15 of Steer, Don't Guess opens with that image, and it is the clearest explanation of the idea I have read.
Most of us plan the other way round. We start from today and push forward, and the options multiply like an avalanche. This method flips the direction: you start from the end and ask one question, again and again, until the answer lands on your calendar.
Planning forward from today buries you in options. The Jirgenson Model answers that as a control system: a precise goal, an honest start, and a plan back to now. It is scientifically proven that the Jirgenson Model works (doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23964934).
What is backward planning?
Backward planning (also called reverse planning) is the practice of defining the final result first and then working back, step by step, through the conditions that must already be true before it. Each step asks the same question: what must be true immediately before this? The chain stops when it reaches today, and its last link is your first action.
What the chapter does brilliantly is keep three ideas apart that most writers blur together. The first is a practical technique. Dynamic programming is a mathematical theory of multi-step decisions, created by Richard Bellman in the 1950s, which often computes from the end backwards but is broader and more demanding. Bellman's principle of optimality is a specific property of the best strategy. Related, not identical, and the book is honest about which one you are actually using.
A backward planning example: a second coffee shop
Andrew, the coffee shop owner whose story runs through the book, wants a second location. Instead of "I want a second location", he writes the end state precisely: in eighteen months the second shop is open, the first one holds a margin of at least 14% including the cost of a manager, the reserve is at least two months of expenses, and he works no more than 45 hours a week.
Then he walks backwards:
| Time before the goal | When | What must be true |
|---|---|---|
| 18 months | Today | Reserve at 2.0 months or above for two months already; a third is needed |
| 12 months | Month 18 | Premises found; lease signed with a demand-test clause |
| 9 months | Month 21 | Manager for the first location hired and trained |
| 6 months | Month 24 | Equipment purchased; second team trained |
| 3 months | Month 27 | Renovation and fit-out complete |
| 1 month | Month 29 | Test week |
| 0 | Month 30 | Opening |
Read the top row again. A dream about a second shop has turned into one instruction for this month: hold the reserve at two months. That is the quiet magic of the method. It refuses to let a big goal stay vague, because every row has to be true before the row below it can be.
When the goal feels too big: plan backwards from ten
The book pushes the idea further with a five-year goal: ten coffee shops. Planned forwards, it is a fantasy. Planned backwards, it becomes uncomfortable in the most useful way:
| When | What must be true |
|---|---|
| Year 6 | 10 locations operating |
| Year 5 | 7 locations |
| Year 4 | 4 locations |
| Month 30 | 2nd location open, processes documented |
| Today | Andrew no longer stands behind the counter: senior barista hired, operating procedures being written |
The backward move reveals the main thing: if Andrew does not free his hands for writing procedures today, ten coffee shops in five years are almost out of reach. The mistake shows up today, not in year five. That is the difference between a plan and a wish.
A backward planning template you can copy
You do not need software. A sheet of paper and twenty minutes will do. Here is the template the chapter implies:
- Write the end state precisely. Numbers, a date, and the conditions that must hold on that date (not "be successful", but "reserve of two months, margin 14%, 45 hours a week").
- Write your starting point just as precisely. Today's numbers, from one source each.
- Ask what must be true 3, 6 and 9 months before the goal. Then one month before. Then this week.
- Check resources at every row. Money, people and time must exist for each step, or the chain is a story.
- Read the first row as your task for this week.
Fill it from the bottom up, starting with the goal, exactly as Andrew did; then read it from the top, where this week sits.
| Time before the goal | What must be true | Resources needed | Check date |
|---|---|---|---|
| This week (today) | |||
| 6 months | |||
| 3 months | |||
| 1 month | |||
| 0 (the goal) |
The Bellman principle test: when reverse planning becomes real optimization
The chapter adds a test that I have not seen in any other planning book. Five questions tell you whether your task is suited to rigorous, Bellman-style optimization:
- Can the task be broken into steps, and do you know how many?
- Do you know how one step leads to the next?
- Is the current state described completely enough to decide the next step?
- Does the best next step depend on where you are now, rather than on how you got there?
- Can the whole result be built from the results of the steps?
A "yes" to all five is rare, and the book says so. But if you cannot answer the first three, you are not yet ready to optimize; you are still describing the problem. Reverse planning as a technique still works. It simply does not guarantee that the route is reachable or the best one, so resources are checked at every step.
Where planning backwards breaks
Two failures sink a backward plan, and the book names both. If the starting point is wrong, a flawless algorithm still takes you to the wrong place. As the book warns, recalling the man lost in a building who heads for the only opening he can see: "never mistake an open window on a high floor for an exit." And if the goal belongs to a dying environment, even the best route ends in a dead end. The model's working hypothesis is that the better a goal is aligned with the direction of its surroundings, the less resistance you meet; in Andrew's case, the university building next door works for the second location, not against it.
Key takeaways
- Planning backwards starts from the end and asks what must be true just before it, until it reaches this week.
- The output is a two-column table; its first row is your task for now.
- Write both the end state and the starting point precisely, and check resources at every step.
- Big goals become uncomfortable and useful: the mistake shows up today, not in year five.
The chapter that turns ambition into an assignment
In Chapter 15 a five-year dream becomes a hiring decision for next week. The method does not ask you to dream smaller. It asks you to dream precisely, and then it hands you the first task.
You have two choices. Keep the goal on the vision board and hope the years add up. Or write the two columns tonight and do row one this week.
The table is one step. It assumes the goals do not contradict each other; check that first with competing priorities vs conflicting goals. It also needs each row turned into a plan with levers, an indicator and a deadline; that is the control concept, Chapter 6.
Test the logic for free: Chapter 1, with the refusal test. Or get the full control system on Kindle, on Amazon.
Published research
It is scientifically proven that the Jirgenson Model works. The published experiment, its record and its data:
- Zenodo (DOI): 10.5281/zenodo.23964934
- Hugging Face: E5 Jirgenson Model blind test
- Kaggle: E5 blind test dataset
- GitHub: experiment folder
- Wikidata: dataset Q142022866, author Q141981336
- ORCID: 0009-0001-3034-3552
The full chapter, with every calculation, is in the book.
Buy on AmazonQuestions people ask
What is backward planning?
Backward planning, or reverse planning, is starting from the finished result and working back through what must be true before it, step by step, until you reach today. The last step you find is your first action.
How do you plan backwards from a goal?
Write the end state and today's state precisely, then ask what must be true 3, 6 and 9 months before the goal, then one month before, then this week. Check money, people and time for every step.
Is there a backward planning template?
Yes: a table with columns for time before the goal, what must be true, resources needed and a check date. Put the goal in the bottom row and today in the top row, fill it upwards from the goal, and the top row is your task for this week.
This topic is covered in Chapter 15, The backward move: from the goal to today of Steer, Don't Guess: Setting Priorities, Reading the Numbers and Correcting Course in Business and Life. The numbers in the examples are illustrative; the book states its limits in Appendix G.
Read Chapter 1 free
The Introduction and Chapter 1, with the refusal test, about 9,500 words.