Reverse Planning Your Way Along The Yellow Brick Road

 

I’m a big hypocrite.

I often say “Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail”.

And I mean it, but honestly, I don’t always follow that strategy.

For example, I began writing this “FRINGE” blog just over 4 years ago much the way I do many other things in my life…

… to see where it might take me.

Yup. No plan. Just did it.

That’s not planning. Or maybe it’s reverse planning.

Reverse planning makes sense.

Sometimes in the ebony darkness of night when I’m laying in the hot tub, or returning from a late night of bartending, I’ll look into the immense infinityness of the sky.

I’ll pick one star and stare at it as if it belongs to me.

There are 7.4 billion souls in this world so why can’t we all own a star of our own and wonder. Was there a plan in place to make that star? I don’t think so.

It’s a random occurrence… a random piece of the jigsaw puzzle that makes up this universe. It just happened. No plan.

I’m generally a practical kind of guy and so, for many years, planning ahead for the “next” thing has been my approach. Here were/are a few of my plans…

PLAN #1: If I save 10% of every paycheque for 35 years, invest it at, say, a conservative 8% return, I’ll have a million bucks when I head out the big “R” door (sorry but I have a hard time saying RETIREMENT… it’s a word that should itself be retired).

PLAN #2: Forget Plan #1 and birth 3 beautiful kids, spend a few hundred thousand dollars nurturing and raising them to follow Plan #1 and provide for me when I walk out the big “R” door. (ASIDE: DUMB plan… Don’t ever make Plan #2 your #1 “R” plan, it’ll NEVER pan out the way you hope.) Just enjoy your kids cuz they’re cute.

PLAN #3: Forget all the plans and live in the World of Oz, and seek out the Yellow Brick Roads that lead into the abyss, the unknown. Via Reverse Planning.

I try not to do things because it’s what the world around me says I should.

If I had followed the “recipe”… I might have been “successful”. You know, traditionally successful. I had a modicum of grey matter in my Green head.

I had tons of chances and opportunities to rise up the snakes and ladders game of success. But that would have been heading into a shitstorm for me. A plan, yes. But a bad plan.

I’m getting older – likely more foolish, definitely more impulsive – now I just wanna dive in to something…”Ready. Shoot. Aim.“-style …

Magically delicious, I’m discovering in recent years that while concrete plans are lovely and a pretty important framework for life, the most pulsating, invigorating and wondrous events seem to occur by the theory of “A Random Walk Down Main Street“.

I’m pushing the string now instead of pulling it.

There’s something very energizing about travelling down an unknown foreign alley to see where it will lead…

Most of what I do today I don’t do for money. I truly love the almighty dollar, but it’s a tool, a Harry Potter wand for my use, not the object of the game.

Sure, I spend hours each week researching and investing my money in APPLE and VICTORIA’S SECRET but outside of that, the stuff that occupies my hours and days very rarely results in a financial gain.

I do things for the challenge, the sense of accomplishment and fireworks and enthusiasm it fills me with.

Things like learning to make sushi. Teaching new immigrants English skills. Drilling over and over the tough guitar licks in Fleetwood Mac’s Never Going Back. Mixing my first Strawberry Daiquiri. Making toilet paper origami Ogopogos.

I’m looking to reinvent myself with ideas and options every day. I’m learning new skills, practicing new efforts, trying on new careers for size.

We’re not only the average of the five people around us.

We’re the average of the habits we create, the things we eat, the ideas we nurture, the talents we pursue, the content we consume.

Writing this blog is part of the whole reinvention process. It’s a part of my life’s circle that contributes to the whole “me”.

Writing is my way of mining myself for ideas and directions.

I really don’t know what I’m thinking or writing about until I’m about halfway along the route. I begin typing away and then the mysterious muse appears from behind a mystical cloud and begins leading me.

It’s as if someone else is doing the thinking, the writing. I merely act as the conduit for the inner machinations of my mind like a violinist in the orchestra watching the maestro for the baton’s leadership and direction.

I began this post a few days back writing about Labour Day passing and how it was the start of a New Year. Then 500 words along I realized that a transformation of thinking had taken place…perhaps IDEA SEX… and I was now talking about how to plan a day, a week, a life via reverse planning.

When I write a song, I don’t know if it will be good until I’ve finished and played it a couple hundred times, making changes constantly. Is it more suited to a country or jazz or folk format? How about the pacing, does it sound more powerful played lento or allegro? Does the chorus need to be higher pitched?

If it still stands up proudly after too too many repetitions, it’s a keeper. Otherwise, like potential careers and other lesser and more important choices we make, it goes into the garbage bin making room for the next idea, the next song.

Reverse planning is shotgun life.

READY. SHOOT. AIM.

Spray your targets of interest, delicious potential passions, lightly sampling and tasting and trying an amuse bouche of a dozen or a hundred things.

Then take the best of what you find along your route and make it your life.

Then look up at YOUR star in the dark dark sky and see how much more brilliantly it shines.