Planning My Planning

I've been trained to think in terms of contingencies. There's always a "Plan B" and a "Plan C" and sometimes I run out letters. Maybe I do take things a bit far with my planning and scheduling. Despite the level of detail and all of the different types of random elements and catalysts that you take into account when developing a plan, there is usually something that was not taken into consideration. The impact can be just as bad as a chemistry experiment gone wrong.

I recently took a trip to China and had an overlay trip across the USA with multiple flights, hotels, and people involved. If I had printed out the entire plan, it would have killed a few trees. In the plan, I outlined every contingency that I could conceive to get me to one of my connecting flights. I failed to consider the flight that connected me back home in between trips could be the one that caused the schedule to fall apart. I had to think on my feet in order to fix the mess that this caused.

You can schedule and plan all you want, but what ultimately matters is how you deal with the issue at hand. Falling back upon your schedules and plans isn't necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes it just takes that leap of faith. That might be the best contingency of them all.

See ya.