John Y’s Musings from the Middle: Planning

Thought for the day.

A friend admonished me for not planning well. She’s right. Up to a point.

The keys to any plan are to 1) plan ahead; 2) plan strategically and 3) execute that plan flawlessly.

If you can only do two of those three things, pick planning strategically and executing flawlessly. You don’t have time for the most thoughtful plan, but a strategic plan developed on the fly is better than no plan at all.

If you can only do one, there’s not much of a point. You could choose executing flawlessly a non-plan but that’s not really possible. You could choose creating a strategic plan but if you can’t execute it, what’s the point? And you could plan to plan, but why bother?

However, if you are a “planner” and can only choose one, you’ll probably choose one anyway because planners like the illusion of being organized and often-times like to simply plan for planning’s sake. And that’s fine. If you are one of these types and not very flexible, pick whichever one of the three makes you most feel like you are actually doing something constructive and “planning” —since they are all equally useless. At least you’ll feel better about yourself and be less frantic about your non-plan.

On the other hand, if you can’t do any of them at all (and are cool with that), find me and we’ll hang out and find a way to have a better time than those crazy planners,

Just to spite them.

Of course, we don’t really want to spite them because we’ll eventually need their help in getting a ride back to wherever we started since we didn’t plan on having a car or write down the address of where we were staying or where we are going. So if you aren’t a planner, at least keep a planner nearby.

Always.