Planning is the key to turning a good idea into actual behaviour. It means working out the "what, when, where, who and how" in advance.

• What exactly do you plan to do?
• When will you use the plan?
• Where do you plan to use it?
• Who else might be involved?
• How are you going to make it work?

Barriers are things that can get in the way of your plans. For example, you planned to go for a walk, but it's raining. Although the barriers may feel out of your control, your response to these barriers is entirely in your power. Back-up planning for a rainy day can include bringing a rain jacket or postponing the walk to the next day.

A backup plan is a way of pre-empting the obstacles and barriers to your plans’ success and deciding what to do when they come up. The best way to make a backup plan is by linking the solution with an obstacle or a barrier in an “IF ... THEN ...” format. This means - IF ‘x’ occurs, THEN I will do ‘y’. Having a backup plan is that if things start going wrong, you don’t need to think of solutions - you already have one.