Of plans

I recently met up with an old friend of mine and we spent some time catching up with what had been happening since we last met. And then of course we continued right onwards from there and talked about what was going on now and what was planned for later this year. And an interesting discussion spawned regarding planning. We had slightly different points of view--I have plenty of plans and even multiple plans for the same things but my friend brought up the point that planning was sort of scary. Well, not exactly scary, but difficult and restrictive.

I started to think about this and what was my relationship with plans. In a way I don't see plans as restrictive or normative in any way. Plans are sort of like a framework or a support structure which I can use to keep track of things. And multiple plans allow you to plan for contingencies. And if you deviate from plans, that's ok too since plans are in fact organic. At least I feel so. I even like to plan things over different time horizons. Plans spanning the following year should be pretty clear. Horizons of three to five years need to be done with a slightly lower granularity. And 10+ years are just broad directions and ideas. And of course I will readily admit that none of my plans have ever worked out the way they were originally envisioned. But that is really alright, because the planning process itself has benefitted me as it has made me think about certan issues in advance, hopefully even before they become acute.

My friend's point was of course very valid also. Plans can of course feel restrictive if they are planned to be static and rigid. I'm of course a firm advocate of the opposite, aforementioned way of using plans. But it might be that formal plans (such as the ones you sometimes have to do at work, or at school) may be scary as you have to quantify the goals and steps and present them to other people. And then I guess it might be problematic to admit to yourself that now that you have told about your very thoroughly quantified plans to everyone else, it's shameful to admit that you can't follow through on them in their current form. But I still firmly feel that these cases can also be solved by taking a more relaxed view of the plans. If deviations start occuring or the goals have moved and the plans seem to solve problems that aren't relevant anymore, then the drift should just be countered by changing the plans. Or adopting a contingency plan. And that itself should be simple enough, since you should be able to motivate the plan to at least yourself, preferrably also other people if the plan includes them too.