Flying by the Seat of your Plans–A Case for Thinking things Through

What is it about Yo-Pros that makes an impromptu one-way ticket purchase so appealing? Why does Gen Y want to ditch their hard-earned plans and live a life unscripted?

Short questions, long answers.  One crack at it:  Many up-and-comings have spent decades breathing in an air of schedules and strategies.  Do well in high school to open up opportunities for college.  Ace curricular and extra-curricular activities at university to polish that resume.  Start the job search process early to expand the pie of career choices. And so on.  If you’re nodding your head so far, it may logically follow for you that “dropping everything” would not only be idealistic, but ideal.

So that’s the “it’s nice to give your rest your brain every once in a while” answer.  Fair enough.  But I have a hunch people my age are putting even more value in the un-planned nature of things.

For instance, there’s a difference between breaking plans for the sake of relaxation and actively pursuing spontaneous urges.  This is like deciding not to follow through with plans for dinner on Friday night and instead driving an hour to hug a big tree because you want to.  See what I mean?  In the first case, you put plans aside.  In the second, you throw plans out the window.

There’s a danger in being so impulsive, dare I say, careless.  The danger is that we lose out on future opportunities–not because they never existed, but because we didn’t see them coming.  Even worse is that we slack on our A game–because some of life’s greatest contests require training.  (Come on, you know I’m ’bout to bust out the 6 P’s, right?–Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. That one’s for you, Dad.)

I’ll admit up front that my views here are shaded by my love of planning.  But I’m not making a case for planning every of life’s moments in minute detail.  Oh no. We all need time off every once in a while.  (I just work mine into my schedule–planned downtime. You line up your vacations, don’t you?)

The case I’m making is that planning now actually give you flexibility in the future.  It’s a return on an investment. Consider the following:

Buying a house. It’s clear.  If you want to buy a house, you need at least a few things:  money for a down payment, knowledge of the area, an understanding of the process of buying a house, and good credit.  Let’s say you’re not a saver and you don’t have enough coin to put down 20% percent.  Now the bank requires that you pay mortgage insurance and your monthly payment goes up, meaning you’ve got to readjust what you can afford.  Flexibility restricted.

Or, let’s say you didn’t take out a credit card at a young age, or only took out one credit card and didn’t let a balance acrue on it.  Or, you didn’t read up on buying a house and thus have to rely on your realtor to choose the places you will eventually select your home from.  All of these decisions were like pulling branches off of a tree, until you limited your choices to one, uni-directional trunk.  You move forward, but not in the direction you might have wanted to.

Buying a house is no different from wanting to travel to Costa Rica, wanting to switch careers, or wanting to start a family.  If you haven’t thought it through, you are not putting yourself in the best position possible. Sure, you’ll still be able to buy a house without much planning.  You’ll still be able to travel.  You probably will have a great home and you’ll have a great time on your trip.

But the fates of decisions are not always subject to your outlook.  There are many cases where life will pass you by because you did not plan.  Life will say, “Wait a minute.  You don’t have the necessary qualifications for this.” Remember pre-req’s in college?  Life has them too.

The trick is to look out for them.  Here’s what I do. I sit down every couple of months and think about where I want to be in 5 years.  If I can muster up the inspiration, I dream about where you want to be in 5 years.  Then, I design a course of action.  It’s my little chess game and I’m thinking about my moves in advance.  I want to be three steps ahead, not caught off guard by a check-mate I never expected.

I’m all for living it up and dreaming big–but I’d rather fly by the seat of my plans than by the seat of my pants.

What about you?