You’ve gotta have a plan.
Plans are essential, are they not? Without a plan, your weekend jaunt to the Carribean can, thanks to a tropical storm, turn into a hotel room Netflix marathon. Without a budget, you may unknowingly forego your next home repair for an extra round of drinks. In short, if you had clean underwear and gas in your tank this morning, you have planning to thank.
Without a doubt, we need to have plans and not just for practical reasons like the ones discussed. Thinking ahead makes us FEEL better too. Theoretically, without the worries of tomorrow we are free to enjoy today. Not only that, a solid plan can make us feel just a little superior to others, like those poor souls who didn’t use call ahead seating at the restaurant.
It makes no sense to fight city hall (or the Future).
Despite their enumerable benefits, our best laid plans inevitably come under scrutiny. If you’ve ever done a major addition to your house, you’ve probably had to submit building plans for approval from a Zoning Board or Commissioner before beginning construction. In response to your submission, you typically get one of three responses: an approval, a denial, or an approval contingent on changes. In short, the process is not as simple as picking up a hammer and swinging.
Unfortunately, even outside of the construction world, life’s response to our planning efforts can be similarly uncontrollable. It’s as if a Future Commissioner hands down judgements of our plans. However, unlike the Zoning Commissioner, the Future Commissioner requires us to enact our plan before she decrees one of the same three answers, a denial, an approval, or a conditional approval.
Humility – the missing link to most plans.
Can you imagine cooking multiple meals for guests and allowing them to sample and pick their desired main course? In essence, we never truly know the right course of action in any given situation until we take action. And, however well-researched or thought-out, our plans can still be toppled as easily as a child’s tower of blocks. To acknowledge this fact we must be humble.
What if we somehow could see the future? No, I don’t mean in a prophetic way like a character in The Matrix. Instead, we can use an ability we’ve had since childhood – our imagination. Most conventional planning wisdom regards failure as something to be planned against, not accepted. What if, instead of fearing the worst we made peace with it? Wouldn’t we then be more capable to respond when things go bad?
It’s one of the most commonly misunderstood facts about planning. Failure is not an option, it’s an outcome. Success is also an outcome. Neither is a choice. If a Boeing MAX 8 lands on your car during your commute, anything else you planned to do that day will technically be a failure. True humility involves a surrender to fate.
Even if failure is not an option, it’s still a possibility.
At this point, you might claim your secret to success is denying the possibility of failure. In essence, you use pressure to motivate yourself. While stress has been shown to produce a short term boost in productivity, it’s also been proven to reduce creativity and drain our energy. Doesn’t this seem like a steep price to pay for the luxury of temporarily fooling oneself
Humility – the best insurance policy.
When it’s time to face the truth, humility can free us from the feeling of loss. The humble person knows they were never entitled to a good outcome in the first place. Our hard work was a prerequisite not a guarantee. The good news? It’s impossible to lose something we never had in the first place. We didn’t lose anything and, instead may have gained valuable experience.
I propose the key to better planning is a better perspective on planning. It’s a valuable tool to move us toward better outcomes – no more, no less. It’s time to acknowledge that we can never fully control what happens as a result of our efforts. Just as we have plans for the future, the future will inevitably have it’s own plans for us. We can only learn, adapt, and respond.
Sincerely,
Chris Pawar