Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 1: tip is that planning is like GPS. Even if circumstances
Speaker 1: change and you need to change your root, having a
Speaker 1: plan will still help you get where you are going.
Speaker 1: Today's tip comes from Rebecca Roch's podcast. On a recent episode,
Speaker 1: she compared planning to GPS. She said, making a plan
Speaker 1: for how to get to your goal is like using
Speaker 1: Google Maps to work out a root for somewhere you
Speaker 1: need to be. You know it's giving you what looks
Speaker 1: like the best route at the time, but you also
Speaker 1: know the root it gives you might change as you
Speaker 1: go along. That's part of the deal. I love that analogy.
Speaker 1: I think it does a few things. First, it established,
Speaker 1: which is that plans are valuable even if not everything
Speaker 1: goes according to plan. Without a planned route, getting to
Speaker 1: a destination you are unfamiliar with will be tricky. I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe there will be signs, maybe it will work out,
Speaker 1: but the odds are reasonable that you will get lost
Speaker 1: somewhere and log way more travel time than required, even
Speaker 1: if you do ultimately get where you are going. Similarly,
Speaker 1: having a plan for how you are going to write
Speaker 1: a book, or go back to school, or even how
Speaker 1: to get everyone to their activities this weekend drastically increases
Speaker 1: the chances that these things happen. Second, thinking of a
Speaker 1: plan as being like GPS means acknowledging that you might
Speaker 1: need to recalculate the route. Perhaps a road will be closed,
Speaker 1: or GPS will pick up a traffic jam that didn't
Speaker 1: exist when you left the house. If so, the GPS
Speaker 1: can help you adjust. Same with a plan, as you
Speaker 1: encounter varying conditions or challenges, you can adjust parts of
Speaker 1: it as necessary to help you get where you are going.
Speaker 1: And Finally, thinking of plans as being like GPS acknowledges
Speaker 1: that plans are a tool. The ultimate goal is to
Speaker 1: get to your destination. GPS is a really cool tool
Speaker 1: to help you optimize getting where you are going. Likewise,
Speaker 1: plans are a smart way to make sure that goals
Speaker 1: are achievable. The plans themselves are not the most important part.
Speaker 1: If you plan to train for a ten k by
Speaker 1: running on your treadmill in the morning before work, and
Speaker 1: you drop a long list of prescribed morning treadmill workouts,
Speaker 1: and you come to realize that you cannot stand the
Speaker 1: boredom of being on your treadmill, you can come up
Speaker 1: with a different plan. Instead of running four miles on
Speaker 1: the treadmill in the morning, you run four miles outside
Speaker 1: at lunch. On a work from home day, you take
Speaker 1: your running closed to the office and run the prescribed
Speaker 1: three miles outside after work before it gets dark. The
Speaker 1: plan was one way to achieve your goal. There are
Speaker 1: probably others. GPS can often give you multiple routes, and
Speaker 1: you can choose based on what matters to you. What
Speaker 1: I especially like about this analogy is that it answers
Speaker 1: the common criticism that life doesn't go according to plan
Speaker 1: or go there is no point planning. This is just silly.
Speaker 1: If you are trying to get to a meeting in
Speaker 1: another city and along the way your GPS system encounters
Speaker 1: a closed road and recalculates, this doesn't mean there is
Speaker 1: no point in GPS. I mean, hey, we should just
Speaker 1: get in the car and see where life takes us.
Speaker 1: Enjoy the drive. I mean I enjoy the drive a
Speaker 1: lot more when I have a reasonable sense where I
Speaker 1: am going. Same with plans in the meantime, this is Laura,
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening and here's to making the most of
Speaker 1: our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've
Speaker 1: got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at
Speaker 1: Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a
Speaker 1: production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.