What Happens While You're Making Other Plans

 

You know the saying life is what happens while you're busy making other plans. It defines my relationship with long term planning. Yes. I need a plan, it provides direction without being as bossy as the GPS in my car. Plans, for me, have to be loosely held otherwise all life gets crushed out of them.

Owning the boat we do and living aboard it were long term plans that came to fruition. Publishing - also a long term plan that worked. Sorta. In true plot-twist fashion, nothing quite works out the way you'd envisioned. I'd imagined a long string of scifi titles to my name by now. Instead, the publisher asked for anything that wasn't scifi. Well okay. There's that bossy GPS after all, yelling at me that I'm taking a left NOW into other genres until I find home.

The reason the cat in the sunbeam is up there is that he illustrates one of the finer points of long term planning. Every single one of us tucks our hopes and ambitions and drives into our goals. Those goals reflect some of the finest points of our aspirations for ourselves. And then the universe hands us a situation that shows us that our priorities weren't what we thought they were. Or maybe I'm just a terrible planner. Point is, the elderly gentleman above has set his paws on his path out of this life. It's a long slope for him, one that could take another year to two years, if I'm lucky. The trade off is that I'm on call for him 24x7. Medications. Shoveling food into him. He cannot be left for more than four hours at a time. I understand it's a little like having itty bitty kids - cause he gets me up every few hours of the night to tend him. And not a bit of this was factored into my long term plans. Any plans, really. Sure. I still have long term plans and I am still working toward them. But let me stress how this guy getting sick utterly altered what I believed were my priorities.

Most of us think we understand our priorities. I'd submit that we don't. Not entirely. We're human and we operate from a particular blindness that assumes everyone and everything we love will remain the same - unchanged. Forever. Intellectually, we get that's not true. But until the severe mental illness strikes you or one of the people you most count on in the world, until that panicked midnight emergency run somewhere with someone you'd trade places with in a heartbeat, your priorities haven't been put to the test.

Every one of us are going to run into bumps in the long term planning road. It's why I've learned to hang onto my plans loosely. Because when life happens, it sometimes pays to examine your fistful of plans and cast aside any that no longer make sense. Once you've done that, though, the vital thing is to keep going. Creep toward the goal. Crawl if that's what you have to do. Just keep moving in the direction of the dream. Whatever it may be. That's where you'll find me. Out there hobbling along my road, muttering at my GPS to shut the fuck up.

3 Keys to Successful Long-Term Planning

The first casualty of war?  The plan.

I still make 'em. I make lots of plans. I, on frequent occasion, even write them down. For I am...

List Girl, Planner Extraordinaire! 

~cue superhero theme song~

I do short-term, I do long-term, I do them by halves and by wholes. For plans are pathways to achieving one's goals.  

I am...not going to tell you a story. I am going to tell you 3 tips to setting long-term plans, 3 times to revise those plans, and 3 times to scrap the damn things. 

3 Keys to Successful Long-Term Planning

1) Set Goals within Your Sphere of Control

Yeah, yeah, it sounds glib, but too often people choose goals rife with dependencies on others. Guess what? You can't control other people.  Ex. "Hitting the NYT Best-Seller List" is a common long-term author goal. It's a shitty goal. Why? Because you're depending on 3rd parties to achieve that goal; the most obvious being consumers. There are the sneaky things too like other releases during that week, the often changing parameters of the NYT list, and reporting systems that don't report all books sold.

How do you revise that goal? Most people would think "go smaller, go micro, go with the task you can control that's just shy of hitting The List." That's goal-setting to benefit others (like your boss). I'm talking about setting long-term goals for your life. You go bigger, think deeper. What is it that hitting The List gives you? Once you figure that out, you adapt your plan to achieve it through means and methods within your control.

2) Be Realistic about Resources & Responsibilities

Whether it's money, family, flexibility, or knowledge, don't lie to yourself. Take those things into consideration when making the plan. Be brutal with yourself if you must, but be objective. At certain points along the route, you're going to assume additional burdens; similarly, you're going to shuck burdens along the way as well. If the words "I can't" crop-up as a road block, then think bigger and think differently. Innovate other ways of achieving the milestone. 

Any long-term goal should be a challenge to achieve. It's how we grow as individuals.  You will need to gain new skills, more knowledge, more experience. Allow yourself a learning curve. Give yourself permission to be a student. Assume there will be failures along the way. Celebrate them, learn from them, move on. You will never be omnipotent, but you can be successful.

3) Don't Be Tethered to Time

This probably flies in the face of every bit of goals and planning instruction you've ever encountered. Remember, we're talking about the long-term here. Short-term goals and plans, they're all time-based. Long-term isn't. So many people start their long-term goals with "By the time I'm XX age..." Age is a factor only in what others will let you do. If age is a constraint, go back to the first point in this list. Death is pretty much the only mitigating factor of time in long-term planning. 

3 Times to Revise the Plan:

1) If you've set the right goal, the plan can always be revised. It's a living pathway. As you learn more, revisions to the plan are expected.

2) When achieving another goal takes higher priority. 

3) When an influencer enters or exits your sphere--this could be technology, a person, war, etc.

3 Times to Scrap the Plan: 

1) When you no longer want to achieve the associated goal.

2) When you're dead.

3) Did I mention dead?

Remember, folks, spontaneity is fine as long as it's planned.