Auto-Pilot – Failing to Plan

Failing to Plan – the old adage

Failing to plan is a bit like having an auto-pilot in charge of your life, just meandering from thing to thing, from place to place, from experience to experience. With no goals or destination set, the auto-pilot is just going to keep flying around. You might get lucky and end up in some place you really love, but what’s the likelihood of that? Like the old adage says, failing to plan is like planning to fail.

There are consequences to failing to plan

Imagine for a moment that you are flying around the world… think of the wonderful places you can go and the experiences you’ll have there. Then remember that you have to plan to land at an airport! It’s probably not going to be quite as much fun if you land in the sea, or in a field. You’ll probably spend your time repairing the plane to try and get it back in the air.

So if you have no target, no goals or destination planned, expect to land somewhere you have no wish to be! If you truly want what you want, then switch off your auto-pilot, take the controls and set your target and plan to land at the airport, not in the sea!

I’ve updated this failing to plan article

I wrote this article in 2007 originally and since then I’ve learned a few things along the way and worked with a great deal of people who have also learned some things along the way. I really feel that (especially in the current world economic climate) that people are beginning to wake up to the idea that whilst they are failing to plan, they are not in charge of their life at all. We’ve spent so much of our time having people tell us what we should do and for most people it’s not working out now. The value of stating what you want, planning out your life and then going ahead and taking actions towards these goals is getting clearer and clearer.

I also use the example now that if you are wanting to go to a new place, then it’s pretty easy to just set off and go somewhere else. However, if the thing you really wanted, was to go to London, you might end up in New York. Now most people will just settle for that and say, well New York is ok, I suppose I’m happy here. But if you really wanted to go to London all you’ve really done is the failing to plan piece!