The simplicity of the A-B-Z Framework makes it applicable to anything and everything. It can help you make plans for a work project, a professional or even a personal goal. So, when you have a goal in mind and you are thinking about making a plan, figure out these three things:
A. Where you are right now
B. Your next step
Z. Your end goal
A simple example to help explain it further could be that I want to find a staff scientist position at the NIH. That becomes our Z – our end goal. So our A-B-Z plan might look like:
A. (Where you are): My current job is a postdoc at the NIH
B. (Your next step): Do informational interviews with staff scientists at the NIH to hear what worked for them
Z. (Your end goal): Landing a staff scientist job.
Once you’ve written this down, stop planning and execute on B. Once you do B, you’ll get a better idea of the many other steps (C, D, E, F, G….) needed to get to Z.
This framework is helpful because most people get too caught up in the details and over plan, mapping out every single step along the way. Doing so actually overwhelms and we encounter the analysis paralysis and never end up taking any action. The key to this framework is B – what is the next thing I can do RIGHT NOW?
