“We make plans as though tomorrow has signed a contract with us. Life reminds us that it never did.” – MJ Martin
The Illusion of a Perfect Plan
We make plans because plans give structure to uncertainty. We book flights, schedule meetings, organize vacations, coordinate work, and convince ourselves that next Tuesday is somehow waiting patiently for us exactly as we designed it.
Yesterday, my schedule looked perfectly reasonable.
I had been camping in beautiful Niagara Falls for two weeks. As the vacation wound down, the plan was to drive my SUV home to Toronto, unload it, mow the lawns, take the GO Train back to Niagara Falls, retrieve the motorhome, drive it home, and eventually return it to storage.
Then came the larger plan. Beginning next Tuesday, I was scheduled to start eight weeks of intensive weekly business travel to numerous locations within Canada and the USA.
Everything was organized. Flights were meticulously booked. Hotels coordinated, rental cars reserved, and every day scheduled to perfection that only a serious Road Warrior could do.
Then I woke up sick.
Twenty-Five Steps Changed Everything
I was short of breath and nauseated. Driving home was difficult. Unloading the SUV became an exercise in endurance. I could walk perhaps 25 steps and then had to stop for ten minutes, panting as though I had just finished a marathon.
At that moment, the calendar stopped mattering.
The lawn did not matter. The GO Train did not matter. The motorhome did not matter. Tuesday’s flight certainly did not matter.
The Hospital suddenly became the only appointment on the schedule.
Upon arrival at the ER, the immediate response was that I was having a heart attack. So the action was face paced and acutely focused.
Within a few hours, the medical team discovered a deep vein thrombosis in my right calf and a pulmonary embolism in my lungs.
Tuesday’s flight is now cancelled. Explicitly.
We Control Less Than We Think
There is an interesting arrogance hidden inside planning. We naturally assume that because something has been written into a calendar, booked through an airline, discussed in a meeting, or carefully coordinated with other people, it will happen.
But a calendar is not a contract with the future.
It is more like drawing a route on a road map. The route may be carefully considered, the fuel tank full, and the destination clearly marked. None of that guarantees that the bridge ahead will still be open when we arrive.
Life reserves the right to close the bridge.
That does not make planning foolish. Quite the opposite. Successful businesses and successful lives require planning. What becomes foolish is confusing a plan with certainty.
The Value of Adaptability
Perhaps resilience is not the ability to make perfect plans. Perhaps it is the ability to abandon a perfectly good plan when reality changes.
Business teaches exactly the same lesson. Markets change. Customers change. Technologies become obsolete. Employees become unavailable. Projects encounter problems nobody anticipated. The strongest organizations are rarely those that predict everything correctly. They are those capable of changing direction without losing purpose.
Personal life works much the same way.
My objective yesterday was managing vehicles, mowing grass and preparing for next week’s business trip to Northern Alberta. My objective today is considerably simpler: recover.
The destination changed, so the plan must change with it.
Got to Love Science
There is still something remarkable about the medical side of this adventure. Within hours, modern diagnostic medicine could look inside my body, identify a clot in my right calf, trace its consequence to my lungs, and begin treatment.
But perhaps the larger lesson is not medical at all.
We spend enormous amounts of energy planning tomorrow while living in a body, an economy, a business, and a world that make remarkably few guarantees about tomorrow.
Make plans. Make ambitious plans. Book the flight. Schedule the meeting. Take the trip. Build the business.
Just leave a little room in the calendar for life.
Because sometimes the most important plan you make is the one you never expected to need.
About the Author:
Michael Martin is the Vice President of Technology with Metercor Inc., a Smart Meter, IoT, and Smart City systems integrator based in Canada. He has more than 40 years of experience in systems design for applications that use broadband networks, optical fibre, wireless, and digital communications technologies. He is a business and technology consultant. He was a senior executive consultant for 15 years with IBM, where he worked in the GBS Global Center of Competency for Energy and Utilities and the GTS Global Center of Excellence for Energy and Utilities. He is a founding partner and President of MICAN Communications and before that was President of Comlink Systems Limited and Ensat Broadcast Services, Inc., both divisions of Cygnal Technologies Corporation (CYN: TSX).
Martin served on the Board of Directors for TeraGo Inc (TGO: TSX) and on the Board of Directors for Avante Logixx Inc. (XX: TSX.V). He has served as a Member, SCC ISO-IEC JTC 1/SC-41 – Internet of Things and related technologies, ISO – International Organization for Standardization, and as a member of the NIST SP 500-325 Fog Computing Conceptual Model, National Institute of Standards and Technology. He served on the Board of Governors of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) [now Ontario Tech University] and on the Board of Advisers of five different Colleges in Ontario – Centennial College, Humber College, George Brown College, Durham College, Ryerson Polytechnic University [now Toronto Metropolitan University]. For 16 years he served on the Board of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), Toronto Section.
He holds three master’s degrees – in business (MBA), communication (MA), and education (MEd). As well, he has three undergraduate diplomas and seven major certifications in business, computer programming, internetworking, project management, media, photography, and communication technology. He has completed over 80 next generation MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) [aka Micro Learning] continuous education programs in a wide variety of topics, including: Economics, Python Programming, Internet of Things, Cloud, Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive systems, Blockchain, Agile, Power BI, Big Data, Design Thinking, Security, Indigenous Canada awareness, and more.
Martin is a volunteer, a photographer, a learner, a technologist, a philosophizer, and a romantic optimist.
All I can say is been an absolute pleasure and an inspiration to to know Michel.
Dimitri, I am not dead yet. Just nearly dead. I am getting better. We can still go for dim sum soon. Okay?
Nearly Dead!
And yet, you written this wonderfully informative and insightful article in your Hospital grown.
That’s my friend Michael.
Stay healthy Mike. Slow down. Let me know if you need someone or company to drive your motor home back home.
Cheers
Ed
Life can really throw us a curve ball, we go through our days thinking everything is ok and we are impervious to what happens to others, then wham! Reality hits! Glad to hear you are getting better and I wish you a speedy recovery. Myself, and the family, all remember you with great fondness.
Wow! Only you, Michael, could go through this trauma and then write such an eloquent article on your lived experience! Godspeed on your recovery – praying for you, buddy. Remember the old adage: “Man makes plans, and God laughs…”