Day 42: Awesome Planning

The adage goes something like this: Those who fail to plan, plan to fail.

But the OTHER adage goes something like this: We plan, God laughs.

Usually it’s just a question of which pithy saying applies to any given day. Because I am a consummate planner. I love to plan itineraries, fill in a blank calendar (isn’t January wonderful?), make meal plans, check off the items on my to-do list, find new ways to organize my office. In fact, at one point, I thought I might need an organizer to organize my organizers. I spend (waste?) an entire week of my vacation each year decluttering each room of my house. I get a little thrill when I discover a new planning tool. (My latest heartthrob is Cozi, available both online and as an iPhone app. Heaven!)

And yet somehow I still feel disorganized more frequently than I like to admit. And downright chaotic at others.

Planning in the winter can be particularly frustrating. Snowstorms do not answer to my scheduling needs. And my pig-headed determination to do what I want and damn the torpedoes has the potential for disastrous results. They say everything happens for a reason. Yet why is it that I’m so reluctant to accept the message that maybe – just maybe – what I planned to do is simply not what’s supposed to happen?

So as an experiment, I printed out my calendar for the week to see how much of it would get done and how much of it would need to be rearranged by Friday. (I can hear God chuckling now …)

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Monday pretty much went according to plan – I had lunch with my friend in Fairfield as scheduled. So far, so good.

Tuesday was smooth sailing too … but trouble was brewing with a huge snowstorm looming. Maybe they would be wrong?

Wednesday dawned with nearly two feet of snow on the ground. All outside appointments were cancelled or rescheduled. Despite the changes, it turned out to be the most productive day of the entire week since there were not a lot of distractions to pull me away from work.

Thursday was pretty much spent getting over Wednesday. Lots of time wasted on Facebook chattering about the weather. Looking at pictures of dogs in the snow. Kids in the snow. Cars in the snow. 

By Friday cabin fever was kicking in and I began frantically Googling snow depth maps to find out if there was anyplace we could hike over the weekend without wearing hip waders. There is not. Unless we leave the state. So it looks like the plans we had for Saturday may have to be scrapped too.

So the result of my experiment in planning? Two out of five days went the way I anticipated. That’s about 40%. Back in my school days, that would have been a big fat FAIL.

But in spite of it all, I’ve already started next week’s list. Because failing to plan is planning to fail.

Right?

What’s that raucous laughter I hear coming from the heavens?