2017-08-12 - Don't Plan Outcomes

I like planning. It makes me feel better to know what I'm going to do, or what I have to do. I also find that having a plan for what I want to accomplish helps me to be more productive and that it encourages me to be more diverse in my activities. That being said I've found that you need to be careful what you plan for.

When planning it's important to focus on what you can control. I think people have a tendency to focus on what they want to happen. I'm going to get a job, I'm going to buy a couch, I'm going to finish this project. I'm going to win the lottery. The problem being that sometimes you don't have the ability to make what you want to happen happen. You can make yourself look for a job but you can't make people give you one. You can make yourself look for a couch but you can't make stores have the one that you want. You can make yourself work on a project but you can't guarantee you're going to finish it. You can buy a lottery ticket but you can't pick which numbers will win.

If you plan to finish a project and you don't then you have failed which can be bad for your motivation to try again. If you plan to work on a project then you can consider the plan a success as long as you actually did work on it, even if you didn't finish it. it becomes a lot easier to feel good about the effort you did put in rather then what you didn't manage to do. Then you can plan to work on it more some other time.

The other week I wanted to finish a chapter of the F# book I've been working through.  I ran into so many issues working through the examples that I wasn't able to finish. The version of the plugin the book was using didn't work with the version of Visual Studio I was using. The version of the plugin which worked with the version of Visual Studio didn't work with the code from the book. Even after I managed to downgrade the version of the packages to match the book I still had issues running certain examples. I only managed to finish the chapter because I figured out which parts were causing issues and skipped over them. Which goes to show that just because you attempt something doesn't guarantee you can complete it. Sometimes the universe conspires against you and it's not really fair to blame yourself for the universe.

So when you are planning things focus on what you are going to do rather then what you want to happen. It will make it easier to feel good about what you have done rather than feeling bad about what you haven't managed to do.