How do I make a five year plan , when I don’t even know what tomorrow will be like!? Yes, in my head, tomorrow will be identical to today. Not too many day- to - day variances when you are running in a full-fledged power saving mode. But then, there is still scope of a random phone call, a conversation or a reading that would trigger something to break the pattern.
How much into the future can you see? How clear is the future you see?
I have been asked to make five year plans before, but never been taught how to make one. Weird enough, I don’t think anyone I know has had a clue about it themselves, and if they did, they have guarded it like their best known secret. Well, that or I being the proud epitome of impulsive and random never bothered to ask. Plans never work for me, I always said.
Whatever the case, this one is now turning out to be just as obscure as gazing into the crystal ball and fortune telling.
This art of planning is something one is born with, I have started to believe. I surely missed the whole lesson on plans when it was being taught in some remote corner of the galaxy. As usual, I may have been up to learning some “more important” random lessons somewhere else.
With a void in my head where the lesson was supposed to be, I decided to try unravelling the mystery on my own.
It’s been close to two weeks since I started pondering on this one, and while it was triggered by a catalytic little incident, a plan chalked out in oblivion. I believe I may have cracked the code.
There are text books that will give you all the theory you need about plans, business plans to be more specific, but, it is only knowledge. You gain some, you lose some, it is just data, and is useless unless you know how to apply it. The true value is in its application. Life is surely more than planning about business, and I haven’t come across any text books telling me how to plan my life, a bigger issue that, compared to a Business Plan. Planning your life is something you just do along the way.
So we plan, a 99.9% in B School, work for a Fortune 100 company, get married by the age of 28, have kids by the age of 32 , make the first billion by the age of 40. Sure, this is a great wish list, but is there a detailed plan around this? Are the action steps well defined and do we have counter measures for the possible glitches. Most ideas fail because of a lack of proper planning. We leave half baked thoughts floating in space, hoping for them to find their way home. They eventually do find their way home, but they also bring along the 3 little pigs and the big bad wolf, because we let those thoughts wandering without specific instructions - "Don't talk to strangers"
We wonder where we are headed as time and again we encounter road blocks, twisted wishes and everything ugly. Wonder where we went wrong.
In time comes realization,even if your life seems like a chain of random events, a crack of lightening through the gray clouds over your head,one fine day, exposes the order in the chaos, brings into vision all that fits perfectly in the divine plan. While some seem to have a head start, eventually we all catch up.
A plan is all about being able to clearly see your objective, your cause. The machinery of this world runs on planning. We run our own personal universes, all our individual universes fitting into the master plan.
The towers touching the sky were built by architects who could imagine these tall structures speaking to the sky, no scope for mistakes, they imagined it all, the foundation, the concrete mix, the earthquake resistance, the tint on the glasses, they saw it all.
It is only with such depth of detailing can we plan, and plan right. There are no uncertainties, no coincidences. You design your own fate. You plan the future you want. It’s up to you to blind walk the road or rid yourself of the blind fold and be aware of every step you take and the consequences of each step, absorb the scenery.
Being an optimist is great. If you are one like I am, faith should come fairly easy. The difficult lesson though will be preparing for adversities. In our world, everything is perfect and when we are hit with a not so ideal situation, we break, and how. We eventually do rise like the phoenix from the ashes, but it would be so much better if we didn’t burn to ashes every time there was a fire and had a fire extinguisher handy, just in case.
A good plan is one in which we can clearly see our goal, and the path to our goal. The clarity of path includes visions of all possible road blocks and solutions to get past them. It is an exciting adventure, this treasure hunt, with codes to decipher and riddles to solve, each step taking us to a higher level.
Easy Peasy, Exciting? Now all we need is a purpose, a cause we feel for. An active imagination. And Faith, tons of it.
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08 Jun 10
I am still learning the art of detailing, and here's something that I found - a brilliant tool for planning. It's a step-by-step methodology for chalking out a plan. Check it out http://chrisguillebeau.com/Ideal-World.doc
