Conference quark::human_relations-v1

    
    You can plan, but plans change! Would you then be without a plan?
    
    -bd
    
    

    Planning only works if you include CHAOS into your plans!!!!!!!!

    Kerry,

    Plan how to deal with random occurences, do not
    plan these occurences though!

    

    "Life is what happens while you're making other plans."
    
    Don't recall where I saw it.
    
    - M

	The study of project planning reveals an intriguing facet of
    the overall project plan, and that is contingency planning.  This
    is where all those years of playing chess pays off as you try to
    cover all the bases.

	Then again, sometimes it's more fun to just make quick moves
    and avoid dragging the game out forever.

							-davo

    I don't expect to plan my life because all the choices are not mine...
    but I will be prepared, know what I have to offer and what I am
    looking for...just in case the right option is presented.
    
    The secret is to always have an alternate plan...and my alternate
    plan is not as dependent on other peoples choices.  Real easy at
    48 but I don't think I could have done it at 20.

An inflexible plan is always wrong, because you get lost so easily.  What I 
like to do is try to look as far ahead as possible to the forks in the road --
the places where I will have an opportunity to ( or be forced to) make a choice
on the future.  I see life as being a huge mass of these forks in the road.
The trick is to look very carefully for the forks (you may pass a good one
without seeing it) and try to see as far ahead as possible (sort of like
predicting the future, but not that magical) to future forks.  My choice is 
usually to pick the direction that gives me the most future positive choices.
This must, of course, be compatible with maintaining the good things that have
already happened in your life.  One of the reasons I came to DEC was that it
offered a lot of possible directions for growth, and the place I was working
before was pretty much limited to one or two directions.  

Some people I have talked to don't like my approach, because they cannot 
stand the uncertainty.  Most of my career plans go out 2 to 4 years for 
specific things, but further for general things.  The short term plans are 
for things like a specific project to work on, or what group to join.  The 
long term plans are for things like what new things I should be learning to
give me more choices after the 2 to 4 year plan has run its course.  In non-
career stuff, plans tend to be longer term, but much more general.  For
example, the decision to have children is a commitment to raise them for 
about 20 years, and then deal with their going off on their own, etc.  In 
between there, you have all of the stages they go through, how to juggle 
career with children, what to do about education, from preschool through
college, etc.  You can do general planning for that, like making sure you live
near good schools, making sure one income will be good enough for X years (if
that is the course you want to take), etc.  But you cannot plan the 
personalities of the kids, their interests and strengths, etc.  For that part,
you have to wait and see.

I see life as being a small collection of years, placed end to end, with no 
guarantees on the future, but quite a few opportunities to hedge your bets.
If you accept that there are a lot of good alternative futures, but you can 
only have the ones you have prepared for, then that preparation is the key
to your future.

Well, at least it has worked for me..../e

    
    Life has alot of strange twists and turns. Sometimes plans go haywire.
    Your life can turn topsy-turvy. Have you ever heard of unforseen
    circumstances? When someone tells me that they are going to have
    two children... a boy and a girl. A house with a white-picket fence.
    I just laugh because I know that nobody can really say where they
    are going to be in five years from now. Sure you can plan some things
    and set goals for where you would like to be in five years. You
    can choose the path you would like to follow and make major life
    choices as they come. You can plan to build a house next year and
    you can plan to go to school but to say you are going to plan your
    life!! You just can't do it!!!
    

        In my professional life, as an engineer, I do a lot of planning,
        scheduling and estimating. In my personal life its another story
        altogether--I'm always thinking, but never planning. I dream. I
        rehearse life. I fantasize. I second guess. I don't plan. I don't
        schedule. I don't budget. I spend less than what I earn. I spend
        my time on what I love. I invest. I do things because they open
        up new possibilities. I make commitments to do things or be with
        people I love and then I keep them. But I really don't plan.
        
        JimB.

    
    	It has been said that most people spend more time writing their
    Christmas list than planning their lives -
    
    	Really?  I believe it!
    
    	Short term goals; "tune up the car this weekend", are good for
    planning immediate time.
    
    	Long terms goals; "enroll in the WPI MSEE program" are good
    for planning how life will pretty much be.
    
    	Set your goals out of reach, but not outta sight!
    
    	Joe Jas
    

RE. < Note 227.4 by 2B::ZAHAREE "Back from the brink of disaster!" >
    
                <<< 2B::NOTES1:[NOTES$LIBRARY]SOAPBOX.NOTE;1 >>>
                  -< TheNewSOAPBOX - Please see note 604.0. >-
================================================================================
Note 109.26                   Quote of the Day II                      26 of 275
QUOIN::THIBAULT "John Barleycorn Must Live"           4 lines  15-AUG-1986 16:22
                           -< ain't that the truth >-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Life is what happens to you
    when you're busy making other plans...
    
    			- John Lennon

    Re .14:
    
    _Soul_of_a_New_Machine_, By Tracy Kidder.
    
    I believe the _young_ man who said, after spending an intense
    several months programming microcode (working in units of micro-
    seconds), "I will deal with no unit of time smaller than a
    season," is now working for Alliant, back playing with fractional
    seconds.
    
    					-John Bishop

    I used to believe in plans (even when I couldn't or didn't follow
    them) until I became a teacher.  My students range in age from 6
    to 48 and I try to reach everybody on some level.  I've walked into
    class with a great lesson plan, started teaching and realized that
    the mood or something just wasn't right.  Then I'd close my book
    and just wing it--with pretty good results.  I'm trying to say that
    I have found that often in life (my life, anyway) you get the best
    results by winging it.  Something will tell you soon enough if you
    go wrong!
    
    Jane
    

    Re: .0
    
    I plan, and I plan and I plan....  Everything I do has a project
    plan to it.  I even have my meals planned out for a month in advance.
    I know where I'm going and when.  It upsets me when someone says
    lets get together and then can not give me an exact time and date,
    so I can plan around it. I can flame forever about people who
    are three minutes late for something...  If I say dinner at 6, its
    ready to come out of the oven at 6, not 6:05!
    
    In the job I have been accused of paying *too* much attention to
    detail...
    
    If you don't know where you are going, how will you know when you
    have gotten there?????
    
    Gale        

    
    "You can never know where you are going in life; You can only know
    where you want to go and then aim yourself in that direction."
    

    I must agree with the earlier reply which mentioned Christmas lists
    getting more attention than people's lives. The version of the
    saying that I heard was that people spent more time planning their
    vacations than they spent planning their lives. 
    
    I heard over the years two sayings which have helped me formulate
    a way of living that I find workable. "You can set your sails, but
    you can't control the wind." And, "Pray for help, but row away from
    the rocks." 
    
    Since I cannot control the wind, I must have some flexibility -
    I find it easiest to deal in general terms, i.e., where I would
    like to be (physically, mentally, spiritually, economically, etc)
    in five years. Every fork that comes along is then easy to deal
    with after evaluating how the various fork options affect the goal.
    For example, how will my taking this new job affect my income
    projections for the next five years, or, how will buying this home
    contribute to being in business for myself by the end of 1988, etc.
    Above all, I must retain the right to modify and delete my plans
    based on experience and uncontrollable facts of life. The arrival
    of a new baby last fall resulted in our timetable being extended
    out by an additional year, for example. The death of an uncle at
    my age of 6 resulted in our living in a different town, which resulted
    in my becoming involved with music in high school, which resulted
    in my becomming a symphony musician, which resulted in being in
    Boston and poor, which resulted in getting a job in a hospital,
    which resulted in becomming a pre-med student, which resulted in
    being exposed to computers and simulation, which resulted in ending
    up in software engineering, which resulted in being at DEC. Sometimes
    a small, seemingly insignificant event can force direction on our
    lives which in completely unpredictable. I could never try to control
    my life to the degree expressed by .18, because I don't need the
    level of frustration resulting from not really being in charge of
    the whole process.
    
    
    The other area is action. Life goes by too fast to sit on the sidelines
    - it is not a spectator sport! I find it more challenging and rewarding
    to be on the playing field instead of the bleachers. I am not afraid
    to take risks (sometimes at the expense of the sanity of my spouse!)
    and realize that failure is usually a prelude to success. Plans
    are met by meeting life head on and being able to combine hard work,
    luck, and persistence while working toward those goals. 
    
    I'm not sure this diatribe makes sense, but it sure was fun getting
    some of these thoughts out.
    
    Lee Parmenter, DTN 264-1643
     

        Catching up with back reading after a few days' lapse...  Would
    anyone like to relate the idea of planning (or not planning) to
    the thoughts in note 212 about "knowing what you want from life"
    (particularly from a sexual partner)?
    
    Do we need detailed planning there?   Even a "five-years hence"
    projection?

Several years ago we spent an evening with a group of people from
'the old country'. Present were a former chief of staff (this is the
guy who runs the army), a member of Parliament (of the party in
power at the time, yet) and the technical director of The
Archeological Center (needless to say, a 'full' professor). 

The professor started by saying that he did not believe in planning,
since no plan ever ended up exactly the way it had been laid out. I
thought (to myself) that was hogwash - planning is absolutely
essential. I very soon found out I was in a minority of one. 

The chief of staff lamely said that plans are sometimes useful, or
words to that effect (having commanded an army that had never lost a
war, I thought that was pretty weak). The member of Parliament
recalled, in a fairly vague fashion, some achievements that probably
would never have been achieved had they not been planned for. 

At the time I was in charge of a small Engineering group (not in
DEC). My annual budget was, I think, less than 1.5 million bucks,
including ten people, capital, projects - the works. That was an
infinitisimal fraction of the budget of each of these lofty people,
who felt that planning wasn't all that necessary. Yet, I had each
and every event in my small world planned to the minutest detail.

So, is planning really necessary? I'll tell you what I told them:
you can do without planning. But it costs more and it takes longer. 

What about your personal life? same thing. You don't really have to
plan for anything. You'll still live. But if you do plan, you'll
achieve more and it will cost you less (total cost, not just money).
From that point of view, at least to me, planning is ABSOLUTELY
essential. 

-- Ron