Ok, so maybe I won’t go so far as to say you never need to plan again. In fact, please don’t do that.
But now that I have your attention, I do want to challenge you, especially if you are a chronic planner, that your planning is making you fail.
“What did you say?”
Yep. Your planning is the cause of your failure. Let me give you one simple reason why:
You are spending all of your time planning and none of your time doing.
If I could just teach you one thing as a chronic non-planner, it’s that your constant need to assess and re-assess problems is getting in the way of executing your plans that are already formed. Sometimes, you have to factor in time, effort, and location to your plan’s results. Sometimes, your timing is bad. Sometimes, you didn’t put enough effort forth. Sometimes, you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time so your plan failed. That means some small part of your plan needs to change. You don’t have to go back to the drawing board with every failure.
Maybe you keep planning and planning and planning because you’re afraid of the possibility of failure. After all, the only way to fail is to do. An un-attempted plan can’t possibly be a past failure, so you’d rather pretend like it would work and move on to the next plan you need to make. So, you stay in an endless cycle of planning.
I will say, I believe Christians have the greatest motivation to suffer inaction and chronic planning syndrome because we are told to keep praying for every decision we make. So, we wait so long either to “pray” or to “plan” while we cower in fear at making a decision. Meanwhile, the choice is made for us due to circumstance, so we wail and weep and ask God, “Why?” or we fail to act at all, become stagnant, and fail to do anything significant with our time or energy until our lives glorify God less than the rocks around us.
We cannot allow inaction to follow our times of planning. But we also cannot allow planning to follow our times of planning. After deliberating about a decision, you must make a follow-up action in order for the plan to even matter.
“Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action comes, stop thinking and go in.”
Napoleon Bonaparte
Maybe Napoleon isn’t an example we should follow for ideals and actions, but there is no arguing that he didn’t get a lot of stuff done in his lifetime (even if that stuff wasn’t exactly good).
So, am I saying that plans are bad? No. The Bible says that plans are necessary for success and if you move too hastily, then you’ll fail (Proverbs 21:5). However, you also have to act on those plans or else they are wasted time and mental effort. So, do something. Don’t just plan your life away. Make your life, and your plans, count.
Micah Davis
The Soapbox 