There are times in one’s life when the seat-of-your-pants technique just won’t work—a difficult thing to discover when you’ve been using it pretty much exclusively for over 30 years.
It’s come to my attention recently that in order to accomplish some of my goals I’m going to need a plan. It’s an interesting experience, basically coming up with a plan for your life. At work, I plan and organize things all the time. In fact it’s what I do. But trying to apply the same principles to my life is a whole other matter.
The thing about it is that you really have to look at yourself—who you are and what it is that you want— before you can even begin to make the plan. You can write down all the grand schemes you want, but if they really don’t fit in with the person that you are or the levels of risk you’re comfortable with, it’s not going to work. Legwork needs to get done before you get anywhere? Guess who’s doing that? Those little/gigantic fears you have? Yeah, you’re going to have to look straight at those and figure out a way to get around them. You have to be able to recognize your challenges for what they are, and find a way to deal with them that will actually work for you. Not what worked for anyone or even everyone else, but for you (or in my case, me). It’s an exercise in honesty and self-examination that makes me shudder just thinking about it.
Being a committed seat-of-the-pants person, this shift in “management technique” for lack of a better term makes my skin crawl. But, just as important as learning what works, is learning what doesn’t and deciding to try something different. So that’s where I am right now.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
