On Planning, Part II
I think I once read that Japan had a plan for the next two thousand years. Given the horrid tsunami and the fact that I’ve been trying to plan, I realized that even with its terribleness, the effect of this tsunami is probably just a blip of an interruption when it comes to a plan of two thousand years.
Doesn’t that blow your mind? Because things are awful in Japan, and the effects of this tsunami will last a lifetime for those involved, maybe even more. The earth has shifted on its axis. Our days are 1.8 microseconds shorter. Japan moved 4 meters.
Doesn’t it feel somehow wrong to go on about daily life? I mean, we have to. We can help Japan in small ways, but there’s not much to do but keep going forward. (An easy way that you’ve probably heard a million times by now: Text REDCROSS to 90999 to give $10 Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami Fund.)
Given the fact that I’m trying to plan the rest of my life now (and I worry it’s an impossible thing to do given the unpredictability of life), Japan and its two-thousand-year plan got me thinking.
Maybe the key to a plan that works is to make one that reaches so far into the future, that the obstacles and derailings along the way are mere blips.
What do you think?
Isn’t there a book on how to plan in spite of the unpredictable life? With all the self-help books out there, you’d think one would contain down-to-earth, non-fluffy advice on how to make a proper life plan.
I mean, do you assume everything is going to go as planned? Do you create Plan Bs and Cs? How many backup plans do you make? Or do you only make them when called for?
You know what’s weird? I used to do this for my students. At the beginning of the year, we’d plan the whole year. I guess I’d pad the planning with extra time to deal with issues that came up and weeks where they didn’t practice.
Maybe it’s like cleaning house, where they say it’s so much easier to clean someone else’s house than to clean your own.
I don’t know.
How do you plan? Are you still living a plan you made years ago? Or a revised version? Or are you making a new one for the future?
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Natasha Fondren is an eBook developer, writer, and classical pianist. After a fifteen-year piano teaching career, she moved to Arizona and built a book design business. She enjoys the lizards and desert heat in Arizona with her Border Collie, Padfoot, and her cat, Dixie Doodle.
I think it has already been said but I go with the old cliche used in lyrics to, I think, Beautiful Boy by John Lennon that life is what happens to use while we’re making other plans. As for my own plan, I’ll have that figured out any year now.
That seems to happen to me, too, Eric! Maybe I can change that, I don’t know.
First I think of the long range plans – career, kids, financial security. (I sound so boring.) Once those big things are on their way, then I have little plans within the big plan. The little plans don’t always pan out, mind you, but when you have the security of the big plan in place, that doesn’t matter quite so much.
Yes, I plan within my plans. Then I take a nap. But it’s okay. That’s part of the plan. It’s on page 957 of the plan, under the heading, “Take Nap”.
Sounds smart to me, Robin! I like that approach. I’m going to try it.
And the nap.
I plan small things. Like my next book and the book after that. (And that’s subject to change.) I don’t know why, but setting longterm goals never works for me.
LOL, Edie! I think of a book as a long-term goal!
I don’t really plan per se, I have goals and try to keep those in mind, which means I try to do something at least most days to work toward those goals. Depending on the situation any plans I make will be knocked around, but a goal is more stable.
That’s a good point, Charles. I like that.
I use to plan for the future until I was slap with a reality check. The funny thing is that I use tell everyone I knew about this quote from the BIBLE. “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” At the being of last year I finally was working on my goals I had set up for myself and was achieving them. It felt like everything was coming together in my life. I start to plan things out: get my Associates in Business Management, working on myself and my weight loss, and making a hold lot of plans for my future. I even plan my 30th birthday 6 months in advance. My 30th Birthday fell on a Saturday night. I thought to myself “That awesome, how many people can celebrate their 30th birthday on a Saturday Night.” I made big plans for that night, invited all my friends and family to join me at Jackson (a high price night club) to celebrate it with me. Then one month before my 30th birthday I found out that I was pregnant with “TWINS.” I thought how this could be, this wasn’t in my plans. Then I found out I had type 2 diabetes on top of my pregnancy. LIFE gave me a reality slap right across my face. Two weeks after I found out I was pregnant with the twins, I lost one of them and was rush to the hospital. There I was two weeks before my 30th birthday fighting for my life. That wasn’t in my plans!…. My birthday came, that night I spent my 30th birthday looking out my window of the hospital staring right in to Jackson as the doctor told me I had lost the other baby and needed to start fighting for mind. So to answer your question do I make plans anymore, no. I live today for today, if I make it tomorrow and achieve my goals then that a gift I appreciate. Since everything happen almost a year ago I have lost over 100 pounds and no longer have diabetes. I enjoy every second I get with my friends and love ones, and never say “well there all ways tomorrow.”
Congratulations on the weight loss, Angela! I know how hard that is. I am so sorry about the twins. That’s awful. *hugs*