In case you are not convinced of what Tyson said, there are many phrases and quotes that confirm what he said, such as “A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.”
What we want to say is that in the context of preparing for a battle, no plan survives first contact with the enemy, but at the same time, we are indispensable for it. Let’s start from this point: plans are not useful, but planning is necessary, and with the apparent contradiction in this phrase, it is true.
As you can see, a person does not make a perfect plan after being punched in the face. Rather, until someone has a plan, they keep getting hit by life. Which means that the wisdom is correct in both cases. Nothing actually goes as planned, but not having a plan doesn't mean things will go better. On the contrary, things get worse when you don't have a plan because you don't know where you're going when you don't have a plan.
A plan is like a road map that ends with achieving big goals. If you have goals, you need a plan. If you want to live a random life, don’t mind plans, and live as you want. However, this is certainly not what you want. So if we are going to get hit by life and we still have dreams that we want to realize, how are we going to be able to plan effectively and then put the plan into action? The answer is easy: we must deal with life’s challenges, and then we will see that we have reached our intended destination.
Planning Helps You Deal Confidently with Life's Hardships
Have you ever felt like you lost control? Do you sometimes feel like you are losing control of your life and there is nothing you can do about it?
Don't worry; we've all been there at some point, and this is a very common feeling. There are many problems, such as failures in relationships, family problems, and all the unresolved issues that make us feel like we are losing control of our lives, and we think that we are heading directly towards disaster.
Feeling like you're losing control of your life is annoying. Unfortunately, it is a feeling so common that there is hardly anyone who has not experienced its bitterness.
When we lose control of our lives, we are traumatized in a harsh and continuous way, and suddenly we feel a heavy burden of thoughts. We forget this burden for a few moments, then something happens to us that reminds us of it again. Then we go to work and face the problem with all our courage, and this is what makes it move from the subconscious to our conscious thinking. By the end of the day, we get exhausted from thinking about it all day, go to bed tired and worried about the problem, and then get up the next morning doing the same thing.
Financial problems are one example. Suppose you want to buy a house, and unfortunately, depending on your salary, owning a house seems impossible, and then you miss out on the quarterly bonus that you usually save in the bank, and then your car breaks down and you have to pay to fix it.
Surely, those many problems are enough to make you feel defeated, and it's okay to lament your luck a bit and say, "I'll never have a home; there's no hope for that."
Unfortunately, your feeling of misery turns into indifference; you stop trying to achieve your goal, and you have no energy or desire to try again. But if you read carefully, you may have noticed that in our example, there was no plan from the beginning to own a house; it was just a wish or a dream to own it without having a road map to achieve this dream.
Thus, every day that we live in our lives without following a plan and every day that goes by sadly watching our dreams evaporate, all of this makes us feel that life is defeating us. Now, back to our example, but with a slight modification of the scenario: You want to buy a house, and you can't secure the down payment, but you can use some wit to work around this problem by breaking it down into bits.
First, you realize that you need to save an additional $2,000 per month for 12 months to buy the house, and given the skills you possess, you realize, for example, that you are good at designing websites. Then you will start working two additional jobs in the field of web design with a salary of $50 per hour, which means that you will need to work 40 hours during the month in order to save $2,000, which means working 10 hours per week. At the end of the year, you will have saved the amount needed to buy the house.
Assuming there are unexpected problems that happen to you, you will find that you can deal with them flexibly by having a plan. Suppose you lose your quarterly bonus; this means that you have to make an extra $2,000 somehow, and let's say your car needs some repairs, which will cost you an extra $500.
Returning to your plan, you have one of two options: to extend your plan's schedule to 13 months instead of 12 months, or to increase your overtime hours to 44 hours per month instead of 40 hours and maintain your plan's 12-month schedule. Now you see how easy it is when you have a plan.
Lack of Planning Means Psychological Exhaustion
As we've seen, planning means more control over your life. Conversely, not having a plan means being prepared to be constantly slapped by life.
Even when there are surprises that come our way in the plan that we have developed, the plan makes us deal with these unpleasant surprises without feeling frustrated or losing control. All we need is to adjust the plan to suit the new circumstances and move forward.
Another example of this is cortisol, the stress hormone, and it is the result of the evolutionary process that made us adapt to risk using a fight-or-flight mechanism that helped the human race survive for the last 200,000 years. However, in today’s world, where there is rarely a fatal danger, this hormone has become a threat to our health rather than something necessary for our survival. We now raise our cortisol levels whenever we deprive ourselves of sleep or confront our angry boss, and this hormone becomes life-threatening.
Some studies have found that soldiers during the war experienced a rise in cortisol levels when they were located in places that might be attacked by the enemy, and we assume that there may be a 50% or less chance that they will be attacked. It makes sense for them to feel nervous because they don't know what's around them during the night.
Supporting our hypothesis is that the same studies also found that soldiers who were 100% sure they would be attacked experienced lower levels of the hormone cortisol. The study suggested that knowing with certainty that they would be attacked forced them to plan and then put the plan into practice. In other words, they did not have time to feel tense or anxious as they were busy preparing to strike back. So it's no surprise that you feel like you're losing control of your life when you don't have a plan.
When You Have a Plan, Don't Worry About Surprises:
We agreed that when you do not have a plan in your life, you will constantly feel that you are receiving slaps from life, and we also agreed that implementing the plan often results in unpleasant surprises that you did not expect. Obviously, this is annoying.
But what you must remember is that unpleasant surprises will happen anyway. So perhaps when you learn to accept them with open arms, you will learn to take advantage of them.
Boxers take a lot of punches during training, and this is the only way they will learn how to avoid them in the future. The same thing applies in life, which means that the only way to implement a successful plan in life that will lead to your greatest ambitions is to learn how to deal with life's roadblocks and come out of every battle with more strength.
Your first plan may fail, as well as the second and third, but over time, you will accumulate experiences as a result of failures. These experiences will help you understand how to proceed with implementing the plan despite the bad circumstances that may stand in your way. Therefore, it is very necessary that we have control over matters in our lives, define our goals, draw up a plan to achieve them, and then implement this plan on the ground.
In the end, goals and desires can only be achieved by implementing the plan and trying again. So if you feel like you are losing control of your life in one way or another, and if you feel like life is taking you by surprise a lot, it may be time to review your plan. Your plan may be substandard, it may be an imaginary plan that cannot be implemented, and you may not have a plan in the first place.
But what you must trust is that after you have a plan and every time you re-evaluate your goals, review your plan to achieve them, and adjust them in light of developments in your life, you will always have this feeling of confidence, and you will feel the meaning of life.
But you must be honest with yourself and make sure that your plan is workable. This does not mean that the plan should be easy and free of difficulties, but planning based on wishes is similar to thinking based on rosy dreams; it is as bad as not having a plan at all.
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