8 | Planning
To have a plan is to be prepared, to have thought things through, to have rationalized your expectations about the future.
If your co-worker says I am a planner, what comes to mind is a level-headed individual committed to working hard upfront to minimize what’s left to chance.
Like design (designing), plan (planning) is a noun and a verb. The verb refers to the process; the noun describes the result of that process. There are many possible plans you can make for the same situation, and it is surprising to me that people will normally ask: do you have a plan? instead of: do you have the plan?
The use of the indefinite article — a plan — implies that any plan will do, that aiming for the best possible plan you can concoct is not what planning is about.
Planning is ballparking because a plan is a window into a future that nobody can control. No matter how good the planning process may be, no matter how thorough and structured, planning is always imperfect because the plan you are developing today will be executed in the future.
Planning is both liberating and futile. Mary Oliver explains the essence of planning in her poem The Summer Day:
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
