Does Planning Suck?

There are two boys, Tom and Dick. They’re sitting on a raft in the dry river bed waiting for the water to flow and take them to the lowlands for fun and adventure. Tom had planned it and is waiting. Dick lives for now, so he climbs out and goes in search of something. He finds a river flowing in a bed some distance away. He grabs a log and jumps in. The river takes him off down to the lowlands and he finds fun and adventure..

Meanwhile Tom waits for his plans to work out, “One day it will happen”, he thinks, “and Dick will miss it”. Maybe, one day…

So what is your approach? Plan and wait for it, or live in the moment, adjusting and adapting as you go along?

My experience over the last couple of weeks shows me that the latter can produce the most amazing results. Results that inspire me, results that challenge my ideas of what I should and shouldn’t arrange ahead of time.

It all starts in Sydney. I had just come back from London. We have a trip to Melbourne planned, then there will be a month free till a house-sit near Bundaberg in March. We plan to go to New Zealand so Cheta can leave Australia for her visa. But I get an email about a week’s sit in Singapore, I respond and we secure it. We quickly look at some dates and organise the trip with a 4 day gap in Singapore after the sit. What are we going to do? No idea!

In Singapore we meet up with a friend who lives in Hong Kong, she’s there for Chinese New Year. We enjoy the place and feel it would be a good idea to spend the extra four days here, especially as we have somewhere to stay.

So fixed then? Ahh… no!

Cheta gets an email from her sister in the Netherlands, she is going to Bangkok to see her daughter! Not having seen her since October last year we thought, “Let’s go to Bangkok, that would be fun”.

Well yes, except there are no flights back to Singapore for us to get our flight back to Brisbane. It’s Chinese New Year and everyone in S.E. Asia is travelling. So we can’t go?

Well what about the train? Looking up the Man in Seat 61, we find it takes 48 hours from Bangkok to Singapore. Wow!! That would be amazing and still give us time to see Cheta’s sister. Ahh! No seats…

We find a return flight to Kuala Lumpur and a train back to Singapore. All organised.

I am now in Bangkok writing this post, maybe I should go out and see the Golden Buddha now I’m here. Yes, but I also need to keep my work going!

I read a regular email from Chris Guillebeau in Bangkok. Wow! That is amazing. He is a blogger I admire. He is someone I aim to meet sometime, and here he is. Not only that, he is inviting anyone in Bangkok to meet him tonight! I’m on! Email and response and we are meeting at the Ban Mae Yiu Restaurant.

We are in Bangkok, we are meeting Cheta’s sister and Chris Guillebeau! Was any of this planned? NO! Could we have planned this? NO!

This is not an isolated case, it happens to us all the time. We are learning to go with the flow knowing that something we didn’t expect is going to happen. If we had planned the whole trip ahead of time these opportunities would not come our way, we would miss them. Or would we? Would others not be there if we had taken another route?

It doesn’t mean we have no plans. I have speaking engagements in Las Vegas in May and Boulder in October. We have an event in Palm Springs in December, an offer to sit over Christmas in Singapore and a potential long sit in South Carolina in 2011. There is family around the world we want to see, places we want to go to. We want to travel from Australia to London overland….

So I am learning a mixture of a long-term vision along with going with the flow. But how do I mix the two? Where is the balance? Where is your balance?

Finally, as I am meeting Chris tonight, I was wondering about how others do it. Chris talks about Non-Conformity, he is working to break the mould, but is he? His target is to visit every country in the world by age 35. To do this he makes detailed plans for specific ‘trips’. He is on one now, that’s why he is in Bangkok. But does the specificity of his goal and the detail of his planning get in the way of living with the flow? Does he let things happen around him and take him to places he never imagined? I hope to find some answers to this tonight, but meanwhile what do you think?

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@gphoenix @chetaurmila

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