A painter does not paint with her fingers, in the air with no brush, no canvas and no colours. The full freedom of painting is not too seriously restricted by the need to apply colour to the canvas with a brush. These are specific tools which make possible the expression of the artist’s vision.
Amino is a dark-skinned introverted lad. For his age, one would mistake him to be nineteen yet he is thirty-five years old. He got married last year, he is a master at his craft- a Manager in charge of Finance at his workplace. It seemed he knew where he was headed in life but he doesn’t seem to be sure anymore. Lately he has been asking pertinent questions: “Do I love what I do? What are my options at this workplace? If I was to leave this job today would I say I fulfilled what brought me? Is this all? The pay cheque, promotions, and a sense of identity?
There are people who have known what they want to do with their lives from the age of 10. There are others who go through university and still wonder what they are going to do. There are others who are content to drift about, taking each direction and each opportunity as it arises.
Can you get to a destination if you do not know where you are going? The simple answer is that you cannot. So you ought to know where you want to go. The detailed plan may not be as important as the destination.
The more complex answer is that you can get to a destination even without knowing where you wanted to go. You simply choose to make your destination the place where you happen to have arrived. This is a post hoc destination.
Detailed plans give purpose, values, decisiveness and a basis for choice. There is a way of monitoring achievement. Where necessary the plan can be made flexible or changed. There is a reason for every next step. Without a road and without a structure it is much more difficult to get anywhere. The energy you put into a situation may be wasted and you are back where you started.
Plans, however, restrict choices and values to ones that were set down some time ago. Plans freeze the plan-maker at the date the plans were made. An alternative to a plan is ‘evolution’. Let influences and events mould the next steps. Take advantage of all that is happening. You may end up doing something you could never have planned to do. I set out as a medical doctor but became interested in human thinking and perception as a result of my work in the more complicated systems of the body (glands, kidneys, lungs, circulation and their interaction).
Another alternative is to plan to get yourself into the best position to move in any direction that takes your fancy. Just as an athlete works towards being fit and healthy with high stamina, so you plan to develop your skills and abilities to their fullest (including wisdom). Many major corporations have given up long-term planning because in an uncertain world it is almost impossible to tell what is going to happen. So they concentrate on being efficient, fit and lean, and then wait to see in which direction to move.
Another alternative is to decide that the hand that chance and circumstance have dealt to you is the hand you are going to play as well as you possibly can.
Another alternative is to make mini-plans which just take you a short way ahead. Then you make another mini-plan, and so on.
