I am not a planning sort of person.
But when I first started my company, I read seven hundred and fifty million websites about writing business plans. And at least ten library books and back issues of a bunch of online noozletters.
The majority of these expressed the opinion that not having a plan is incredibly stupid.
Some were less obnoxious about it than others, but basically they said it’s foolhardy and wasteful to not plan, so hurry up and get to it.
That if you want to get somewhere, you can’t just wander around aimlessly because guess what, that won’t get you there.
Fine. Whatever. So I wrote a plan.
I wanted a plan mainly because I was applying for a grant. And I was applying for a grant because I had no money and no idea what I was doing. Which is hard when you’re also on a mission to make important things happen.
The plan-writing was very stressful and time-consuming. Also completely depressing.
And I didn’t know about not sharing information about your tiny sweet thing with people who don’t have context, so I showed it to [X] and asked him for advice.
“Really? Your mission is to help thousands of people around the world with this? Thousands? Around the world? That’s great, honey, but maybe you want to start with something a little more realistic.”
Anyway. I didn’t apply for the grant. I threw away the plan. Five years passed. The plan was forgotten.
And then. Last week I remembered the plan.
Hey, it’s been nearly five years. Or it will be soon.
And you know what?
I do help thousands of people around the world. Every day. With this blog and with our products and programs. Huh. Whaddya know.
But not just that.
The astronomical-seeming (to me, at the time) figures that I projected the business would be bringing in?
They made me want to throw up, but I put them in anyway because I wanted it to seem like this terrifying experiment could — theoretically — be crazy successful.
So. We’re doing way better than that, as it turns out.
In fact, we’re doing better than all the projections. Than anything I could have projected.
Of course, I did it the hard way and worked myself to the bone for most of those years.
And I was wrong about all sorts of other things too.
But really, just about everything I wrote down came true. The how wasn’t anything like what I was trying to imagine it, but if you look at the end result, all the projections were on target.
So. Where am I going with this?
Two places.
1. Not having a plan is not a big deal.
So I don’t do plans. And that’s okay.
Sure, I do maps. Loose ones. And wish-pondering. And Very Personal Ads. I think about what I want and why I want it and what my relationship is with the wanting.
I work on my stuff. I figure out what needs destuckifying and what I’m afraid of and what my monsters have to say about it.
And then I use Shiva Nata to be smarter than everyone else give me hot buttered epiphanies so I can innovate and keep things sparkly.
But mostly I observe where I’m where I’m going and check in to find out if this seems like a good thing.
Pirate queens don’t have firm objectives. I don’t try to always steer the ship in one particular direction. I am open to stopping at unexpected and unlikely ports. And to hiding out on islands.
2. It’s a Useful Exercise to write down what you want. Maybe … in a plan.
Even though I still don’t really like plans, I’m writing a five year plan right now.
Just to mess with me-from-five-years-from-now.
(Though I may ask Metaphor Mouse to help me give it a better name.)
And I’m putting some completely outrageous things in there.
Oh, the projections I’m projecting. They’re preposterous! Really, the things I’m planning for are ludicrous to the point of hilarity.
But I don’t care. Because I did it before and surprised myself. So what the hell. Why not.
Here’s a super important thing to keep in mind.
Success happens exponentially.
But our brains often can’t conceptualize exponential growth. At least, mine can’t. Not easily.
When everything goes well, it doesn’t go from two to four to six to eight.
It’s more like going from two to four to a hundred.
It feels weird to project that kind of growth because it doesn’t seem right. It can’t be real. There’s no rationale.
Sure you could go from three fans to six fans if they each tell someone about you. But hundreds? Thousands? Why would that happen?
So even though I know from experience that growth can happen exponentially, it’s still easier to imagine things happening sequentially.
So we’re limited in our perception of what’s actually possible.
And that’s okay.
I don’t think it matters. Because it’s about play.
If projections scare you and set off your monsters, don’t do them.
If projections are exciting and send you off into worlds of possibility, yay.
If it’s fun to chart out plans and how things could work one way or another, go for it.
If planning stresses you out, and you’d rather just plant small wishes on the Sunday Very Personal Ads, that’s good too.
The main thing is this:
Is biggification turning into a dreaded, stressful, painful thing? Oh no! That sucks.
That’s why we want to work on our stuff, and wear feather boas and talk to walls and have foxes design our video games.
Because your thing (your art, your music, your blog, your teaching, your business) exists to be a source of good.
And when we’re miserable — because the experts say we need a plan or because we believe the people who can’t see possibility — that makes everything so much harder.
And I will say one more thing about play.
Play is NOT childish. Wanting to play is NOT childish. Play is the stuff of life and the essence of biggification.
We can play with writing a plan or we can play with not writing a plan. Or we can finger-paint a plan with chocolate pudding. Or we can do Ironic Aerobics while wearing a tiara.
But let’s play. Let’s play like we mean it.
A five year plan! To play, play, play and dance, dance, dance.
* And the lyrics! ♫
(For everyone who didn’t go to socialist summer camp when they were kids.)
Who will sing me nine, oh red fly the banners high? I will sing you nine, oh red fly the banners high!
Nine! Nine! The months of labor!
Eight! Eight! The Workers’ State!
Seven is for the day of rest, so the workers keep their zest.
Six! Six! The workers’ week.
Five is for the five year plan.
Four the years we did it in.
Three, three, the rights of the People!
Two is for the workers’ hands, soiled and toiled and horny hard.
One is for the workers’ unity which evermore shall be. Hey!
My childhood, while screwed up in so many other ways, was clearly AWESOME.
And comment zen for the comment blanket fort.
Come play!
Make plans with me. Or don’t make plans. Or share stories about planning and not planning and ways to biggify that aren’t about what we think we should do but what is pleasurable and meaningful and full of curiosity and love.
As always, we let people have their own experience so no unsolicited advice.
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I feel much better for not having a big detailed plan for my baby biz ideas. My monsters aren’t keen on having things Worked Out, even though I get anxious if I don’t know what I’m doing. (Something to chat about with them, over tea.)
Thank you, Havi. <3
.-= Skaja´s last post … Messenger Bag =-.
I keep finding plans that I made and then discarded because they were too far fetched but then when I find them they have come to be. So, I’m going to keep writing them down and hiding them so I can find them later and say wheeee!
I’m trying to work that song into a Violent Femmes version in my head.
I don’t have a plan. I do have a manifesto though.
.-= Riin´s last post … What I learned at my first fiber show =-.
I’m not a planner. Eep. No.
I am discovering, however, that I can feel a flavour, like an allowing and an encouraging and… I don’t know.
There are no dates. Few numbers.
And almost all of it’s in my head.
(No I will NOT write my ‘goals’ down. Dammit.)
But I do get a sense of the swell of the sea beneath me, the pulling back before the flowing forward.
And the peripheral, oblique don’t-look-at-it-full-on ways of attractivizing that swell in a general direction…
If that makes sense.
And, having said that, a playful five year plan sounds GREAT!
I will be a lighthouse for the WORLD!
*zeal-y eyes*
.-= Andrew Lightheart´s last post … What I want God to say to me =-.
This is going to sound like sycophantic gushing… because it is.
I love the effect your work is having on my life and work right now: Shiva-Nata-ing my way into new ideas, conversations with my stuff, and insights into the patterns of my life, and now getting out of my man-sized pressure-cooker with the Dissolve-O-Matic… Phew. This is more fun, more challenging, yet so much easier.
Thank you for setting out into the unknown five years ago; I’m very happy to be one of the exponential tribe of thousands who’ve discovered what you do — which is so distinctly, wonderfully, helpfully different.
You know that scene at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark where they’re wheeling the crate containing the Ark of the Covenant way, way back into an infinitely deep warehouse? Yeah, that’s how much “how to do life” stuff I’ve acquired over the years. And I bet all of us readers and customers are the same in this. So when something comes along that really works — and not only that, does so with kindness, gentleness, and a fun sense of play — it really stands out.
Your work rocks and rules. It not only feels true, the experience of using is like acquiring super-powers in daily life.
Thank you, magic-lady!
Damn, that’s nice to hear. Five year plans always freaked me out. I hate laying out an exact schedule for where I’ll be. What if I don’t make it? Deadlines can be a useful tool, but the idea of feeling like a failure for not hitting the mark makes me feel woogy. When people ask, “Where do you see yourself in five years?”, the first answer to pop in my head is always something along the lines of, “Being awesome…duh”.
In hindsight, things have already changed greatly for me. What started off as a study of dance is now leading me to an all around life as an entertainer. What once was a secret yen to write has given me the chutzpah to try to make it as a writer, never mind the Still Unwritten Novel Iguana that’s whining in the corner. Change can indeed be exponential.
I don’t have an exact plan, but I like the direction that I’m going in. I think that may just be enough.
.-= Kaleena´s last post … Rabbiting =-.
Ha! This is a very reassuring post.
It is reassuring because I still have a Monster Cabaret going on in my head most of the time, on the theme of “It’s Different For Them Because They Are Not You” – where “them” is basically anybody more biggified than me.
But hey. I have more than 300 Twitter followers now, which would have been unthinkable six months ago. Or thinkable, perhaps, but deeply implausible.
Perhaps I’ll write a Plan and put it away somewhere.
Thank you 🙂
.-= Lean Ni Chuilleanain´s last post … My Secret Vault =-.
I was a planner, big time. I wrote business plans every year and I schemed and made charts and projections and wrote down numbers… oh yes, all of that.
And then the recession hit and my plans went out the window.
This year, for the first time, I didn’t write a business plan. I just thought about what I wanted to do. I jotted down a few ideas in a journal. Made my Dammit List. But no Plan-With-A-Capital-P.
It’s been my best year ever. Hurrah for non-plan plans!
Will I slip back into my old planning ways? I don’t know. Just have to wait and see!
.-= Barbara J Carter´s last post … My art on bus stops =-.
Havi,
Thank you for giving me permission to 1) not have A Plan, 2) play with my Very Interior Plans however I need to and 3) have cookies and coffee. (OK, I made the last one up, but still…)
(And please give Selma my warmest regards.)
I made a plan. Last year, at this time, I made a plan for the curriculum I would use if I ever encountered someone who wanted me to be their Teacher (in the eclectic-neo-pagany spiritual teacher sense of the term). Yesterday, I got an Ask for that very thing. I’m not sure the plan will be followed exactly, but, by damn, it was a bit of a comfort to have that resource to go look over, if only to assure me that Yes, You’ve Thought About This. You Can Do It.
Whoo-hoo!
I have a suggestion for Metaphor Mouse: Time Capsule. You know like when you put stuff in a box and bury it so people can find it in the future. And it seems perfectly reasonable that the time capsule would have a letter in it to the people in the future telling them what you think you will be doing then…
This is brilliant. I don’t like plans either but I do like maps and also roads with destinations that I may or may not get to depending on what the side roads look like. Very cool to think you actually got there quicker than you thought and just kept going to a place you didn’t even know existed when you set off. Like Columbus or someone. (Aha I can see how this might start to merge with the pirate theme.)
I might write a plan for slowing down the things I don’t want to be doing so much of though. As an aid to saying no.
.-= JoVE´s last post … Opposite day as a decision making strategy =-.
From a Beloved Lurker:
Uhhh… what is wish-pondering?
PLAY PLAY PLAY!!! Hear, hear!
“It’s very interesting that some of the most important studies we have on creativity show that adults who still retain that capacity to play,to think up new ways to use objects or to play games – just original thinking of any kind – these are the people who, as adults, really get ahead. And that creativity begins in childhood.” -Jane M. Healy, Ph.D, educational psychologist and author of Your Child’s Growing Mind
And for those “grown-ups” who have forgotten how to play or maybe never got a chance when they were wee little ones? This Pirate Ship is the perfect way to figure it all out again.
.-= Megan Lubaszka´s last post … The Bad Fit- Could Your Child’s “Learning Disorder” be a Misdiagnosis =-.
I’ve read many a thing that says: make a plan! and oh, how I do not do it.
This makes me feel a bit better about it.
I have some things vaguely in mind, hopeful projections, if you will. Still working on what I think is possible, embiggening my vision.
For now, I shall put my laundry in the dryer and set about photographing bubbles outside.
.-= claire´s last post … Window portrait =-.
Did you know that I still hope dreams come true? And so I argue back with myself:Crazy batty silly Leila.
And yet…here you are.
‘Play is NOT childish. Wanting to play is NOT childish. Play is the stuff of life and the essence of biggification.’
I so love you pirate queen.
My ‘plan’ is to embrace play whenever and wherever and see what happens. It’s not a plan really but I like it.
x
.-= Leila Lloyd-Evelyn´s last post … Lifes not perfect =-.
I’m shocked. How come that you know this song? You know that I’m from ex-socialist Bulgaria and I am your age so I do have memories from the times of the “five-year plans done in four” 🙂
Tell Metaphor Mouse that my list will be named “In your Dreams”. As in the snotty way people will say “Oh yeah right in your dreams”. And I will simply smirk quietly because they don’t know.
I have this monster who says I’m not Cool Enough to delurk, so for his sake I give you permission to ignore my not-cool-enough-posting.
@JoVE: I love the idea of the Time Capsule. It’s the perfect metaphor, probably because of my fond memories of the time capsule we made in 8th grade and were given as seniors in high school. Fun times.
I only recently found this place and it is pretty awesome. Havi, you are definitely in my Right People with the way you come up with names for things and bring the silly. I love the silly.
My problem with plans right now is that I have a lot of them that I don’t feel like I can do anything about yet. I’ve been feeling like life is all Running In Place lately, waiting for other people to deal with their Stuff so I can move ahead with mine. Very frustrating. Also not totally true–I mean, I finished my master’s degree this summer and I’m making great progress in physical therapy (less pain, yay!) but it’s the things I can’t seem to move forward that keep stealing my time and energy.
I want to say I can’t even begin to imagine where my life will be in five years, but at the same time I have all sorts of Ideas that I think I just need permission to daydream about.
.-= alienbooknose´s last post … Summer is ending… =-.
Last year, about this time actually, I realized that for the first time in my adult life I did not have a five-year plan. The amazing part is that I didn’t proceed to make a five-year plan in a panicked attempt to stave off chaos. I’ve been operating on a quarterly and sometimes even weekly plan since then. The world hasn’t ended yet. And I am the tiniest (teeniest) bit more comfortable with uncertainty than I used to be. (Where comfortable = “on speaking terms with.”)
While we’re quoting song lyrics, here’s an oldie but goodie from the Indigo Girls: “Every five years or so I look back on my life / and I have a good laugh.”
.-= Tracy´s last post … Small and simple- ATCs on a theme =-.
You know, it’s been quite a while; perhaps this would be a good time for me to play with a five year plan, especially given that I’ll be — whoa! — fifty in five years.
So, yes, maybe it’s time for a plan, or a map — or a blueprint! A blueprint for the “house” where I might like to be living in five years! Yes! (Maybe it’ll be a houseboat…hmmm…)
.-= Kathleen Avins´s last post … Candide and capacity =-.
It is so lovely (and fills me with a peculiar sense of lightness) to see someone I admire saying that they’re not a planning sort of person.
I know it works well for some, but I’m far happier to approach life with an ‘along for the ride’ approach, and to make choices as they arise that are consistent with my values and interests.
I adore the comment upthread that says ‘I don’t have a plan. I do have a manifesto though.’
I had this sort-of plan, which lived in my head. Because it was in my head, lots of (lovely, very well meaning) people got all worried about me and thought I was being a flibbertigibbet about my business. So I explained it to some of them, and it made them feel better, but I didn’t like having it all out in the open, all exposed and naked.
And then, the funniest thing happened – I hit my secret projections in about a quarter of the time I thought I would, and my poor naked little plan turned into a big, dancing, laughing-uproariously celebration of success! There’s a long way to go (of course!), but it made me realise I was keeping my plans small and quiet because I was scared. Hello monster!
Thanks, Havi, you’re ace.
I like planning. But really it is more like writing down dreams and schemes, and arrows, and doodling, and pictures and more dreaming.
A five year plan? jaja, I just go along with the flow. But lately I have felt the drive to set down my anchor and be home. Just working with my big monster that says “staying put is boring and can´t be done alone”. “you should be married to be in a house” monster is there too, but, come on!!! I was never scared to be partner-less in the big adventures, but here I am, in a new adventure, on my own, and thoug I am sure it would be different sharing it, I am doing it anyway. Just because I fell flat on my face following a dream around the world, doesn’t mean I will give up dreaming and doing, and playing!
thank you Havi and the commenter mice, for all.
I am someone who needs to feel like she has a plan. Or not necessarily a plan, but a next step. I need to feel like I know what’s happening tomorrow, in order to go to sleep tonight.
I don’t have much of a plan right now, but I also find the idea of making a plan onerous.
So maybe, what I need, is a daily agenda. And I can stop feeling guilty about not having a big plan. Because I think the guilt, and the feeling of “oh, I must have a Big Plan before I do anything else” is holding me back.
So bring on the agenda, and I’m ditching the plan.
.-= Amber´s last post … Toothiness =-.
Fantastic!
I think of these as creating scenarios or telling stories about how things *could* go–and always tell a bunch. Including some that I don’t like at all. I’ve been able to see some amazing opportunities and real treasures in my life, and have avoided driving off more than one cliff, because I had these stories floating in the back of my head without realizing it.
A game I often give my customers when they’re thinking of what they want, how to get there, or generally trying to do a “strategic plan” (and in all of history I doubt any such plan has ever come to fruition the way it was designed), to do this:
Draw five maps, or tell five stories, or create five scenarios, or whip up five timelines in excel if that floats your boat–get as detailed as you want, or stay as general as you want. Picture yourself in the stories. And, make sure at least 2 of them are outcomes you don’t want.
Amazing things can happen just from this.
Thanks for a great post!
Barak
My 1 year plan:
To make the job that makes the money right now as meaningful as I can. To make sure that it is creative, beautiful, and changes the world, even in small ways.
To kick butt at school, take joy in my learning, help others to do the same (both the buttkickery and the joyfilling), and graduate with some mad skills in order to try my hand at healing and self-employment.
To work on the Strange Dream, the one in which I unleash my superpowers on the world.
In the realm of 5 years, I’ve got goals, but not really plans for getting there. The only thing I can honestly say I’ve got planned for the next 5 years is babies. I’m pretty clear on how to make those happen. 😉
Kat
.-= Kat´s last post … Treating Massage Student’s Most Prevelant Injury =-.
I am one who finds it useful to write down What Where I Am Going Might Look Like.
And like you, when I have done that in the past, without much actual conviction that any of this was in the realm of the humanly possible, hm, much of it in fact did happen, or is happening now.
I really think it tweaks a gear deep down in your head somewhere. It’s trippy and a bit freaky but mostly neat.
.-= Sonia Simone´s last post … Mud on my Face- and a Marketing Revelation =-.
This talk of plans reminds me of my sister, brother-in-law and what they would say about plans.
“Well, I don’t have a plan, but at least I have a pla. It’s not quite done yet.”
So now, whenever I get a niggling in the back of my head that starts to resolve itself something I want to do, I’ll claim I have a pla.
.-= Holly Hunt´s last post … Conversation with Character =-.
For me, this dug up all the instances of jokingly saying how cool it would be to be home with a baby while doing your Master’s Thesis (or Pro Gradu thesis in Finland). The term “gradu baby” was thrown around a lot, say, five years ago? And here I am. Doing just that. Was it a plan? No, not really. It just happened to happen that way.
I also noticed it’s 10/10/10 today – a fabulous day to do a Time Capsule (an idea I will shamelessly adopt, thank you JoVE!) for the next five years. Play time! Wheeeee! 🙂
.-= Sari O.´s last post … The Vortex of Terror of Being Seen =-.