046: Long Term Plans

I've always walked a fine line between having a long term plan and flying by the seat of my pants. Some of the best decisions in my life were made very instinctively and were really off course from the direction I was heading. Switching majors in university, leaving my 'corporate' job, starting my first management business. They all flew in the face of 'The Plan' I had at the time. But that's why each one was the right choice.

It can be easy to simply keep going through the motions. When we set out to achieve our long term goals, the time invested can often become a detriment - the sunken cost fallacy. Once we're in it, once we've set that course, it's hard to step back and assess if that destination is still where we want to be heading. For me, those life changing decisions I made came at a time when 'The Plan' no longer made sense, other factors had changed, so a shake up was needed. It was important to have a plan in the first place, and it was equally as important to realize that 'The Plan' was now taking me somewhere I no longer wanted to go.

It's really hard to have a long term plan right now. With so much uncertainty and with so many things changing. It's impossible to predict what next month will look like, let alone the next few years. I know many people, myself included, have struggled with the 'why' behind our current goals.

Maybe the issue isn't that we no longer have 'The Plan', but instead that we've lost the ability to gauge whether or not the actions we are taking have the potential to get us to where we want to be. With no destination, how do we know if we're heading in the right direction? We are left simply going through the motions. And that's not a good place to be.

While this can seem like a dead end, and depressing, putting it in this context has actually helped me come to terms with what 'No Plan' actually looks like.

When I switched majors, when I left my corporate job, when I started my first management business, those were some of the most exciting and productive times in my life. And I had no long term plan! I simply knew that this new direction I was heading was the right one and trusted that if I followed my instincts I'd eventually see where my destination was.

So that's the approach I'm trying to take again. Forget the long term plans, since they're impossible to make at this point, and trust that if I'm heading in the direction I want to be going - the destination will appear, just as it always has before.

~ Steve