Spontaneous or Planned

"Plans are nothing; planning is everything." - Dwight D. Eisenhower

We left off yesterday with our Thomas Merton inspired words: Finding and living purpose is not just a matter of intensity, but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony. As we draw upon these words as a foundation for our discussion on The Four Forces (Emotions, Energy, Thoughts and Time) and how we harness these forces to inspire hope and inspire purpose, a key topic will be how we summon together the appropriate blend of those forces for everything we do, and how we respond to both spontaneous and planned events and tasks in our lives.

We don’t, unfortunately, get to plan for everything in our lives. We constantly face unexpected events or circumstances, so much so that we could be left with the view that planning is useless, and we might as well just react to things as they come to us. But Eisenhower’s words provide good clarity for the rationale behind planning – it’s not about the plan, it’s about the habit and exercise of planning.

Planning and experience condition our behaviors, our actions or reactions, and while there are limits to how much of each we can do or accumulate over time, planning is one of the most important things we can do to govern our mix of the Four Forces - giving us time to thoughtfully prepare or manage our emotions, our energy, our thoughts and our time for a given day, task or opportunity. And over time, the more things we plan for, and learn from (did we do well or not so well in executing our plan), the more we recognize the right recipe for success.

As we plan, we should be thinking not just about “what” we need to do (or need others to do as part of that plan), but also about “how” we do it – what emotions do we want most present (or not present), what energy level do we need from ourselves or others, what thoughts do we want to inspire, and how do we want time to flow (relaxed, rushed, etc.). As we plan the “how”, we can then understand what we must do to prepare ourselves or others. The real value in planning has much more to do with the “how”, then the “what” – the what’s will change, or come at us in different constructs or time sequences or with different time urgency, but we will begin to recognize patterns in the “how” that allow us to more consistently react spontaneously with the right combination of forces, or when we can plan, allow us to prepare most thoughtfully to maximize our chances of success.

As I noted above, we can’t plan for everything, and using Eisenhower’s words the plans themselves don’t necessarily hold much value – but the more we plan the “what” and most importantly, the “how” to achieve it, the more our actions will consistently help inspire hope and purpose.