Saturday, June 21, 2008

Not Everything Will Go As Planned

In these chaotic days, planning is important to guide us in whatever we want to do and achieve. We need the planning to give us foresight to where we are going. Checking on the results after different stages of our progress will indicate whether we are on track to see "light".

Knowing, therefore, the merits of planning, we SHOULD plan properly.

What do I mean?

Planning is easy, if the task is easy and non-complex. However, if the progress to achieve the goal, is complex with inter-links and external factors involved, planning takes on another dimension.

Anticipation becomes the key issue. Planning for failures or interruptions has to be within.

What if the plan or direction change along the way?
What if a higher-priority task comes along and has to be serviced fast?
What if...
What if...

Therefore, planning for schedule interruption is a need and a must nowadays.
Not everything will go as planned.

But what else has to be prepared with these interruptions?

Emotional matters.

With interrupts, everything gets upset. Flow of thoughts, flow of planning, flow of communication, all got messed up. These deviations lead to frustration!

One way to reduce this negative impact to interrupts is to accept them before the start of the journey. This mentally prepare us for deviations when they come along. This will pose less of a mental resistance when interruptions really appear.

Another way to be less frustrated is to be aware that there are times where we cannot take all.

We have to give some, and take some, at times. This is sharing of time and priorities.

We cannot "win" all the time. There are organisational goals, as well as personal goals. Accept that we are in an ever-moving community of people. Many goals and directions come forth every now and then.

Some tasks and people become the prime targets overnight, or within a short notice period. Arrangements, thus, have to be made, sometimes, unwillingly. But, ultimately, understanding is the key issue. With understanding of the situation, comes acceptance. With acceptance, mental resistance and emotional upset will reduce.

To be a better person, we need to be a thinking person. Knowing the surrounding and its situational operation is a good skill to pick up. This will finally lead us to an elevated platform for thinking and performance.


:-)