Planning is like GPS

Even if you have to reroute, a plan helps you get where you're going

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
tip is that planning is like GPS. Even if circumstances
change and you need to change your root, having a

(00:24):
plan will still help you get where you are going.
Today's tip comes from Rebecca Roch's podcast. On a recent episode,
she compared planning to GPS. She said, making a plan
for how to get to your goal is like using
Google Maps to work out a root for somewhere you
need to be. You know it's giving you what looks

(00:46):
like the best route at the time, but you also
know the root it gives you might change as you
go along. That's part of the deal. I love that analogy.
I think it does a few things. First, it established,
which is that plans are valuable even if not everything
goes according to plan. Without a planned route, getting to

(01:08):
a destination you are unfamiliar with will be tricky. I mean,
maybe there will be signs, maybe it will work out,
but the odds are reasonable that you will get lost
somewhere and log way more travel time than required, even
if you do ultimately get where you are going. Similarly,
having a plan for how you are going to write

(01:29):
a book, or go back to school, or even how
to get everyone to their activities this weekend drastically increases
the chances that these things happen. Second, thinking of a
plan as being like GPS means acknowledging that you might
need to recalculate the route. Perhaps a road will be closed,

(01:52):
or GPS will pick up a traffic jam that didn't
exist when you left the house. If so, the GPS
can help you adjust. Same with a plan, as you
encounter varying conditions or challenges, you can adjust parts of
it as necessary to help you get where you are going.

(02:12):
And Finally, thinking of plans as being like GPS acknowledges
that plans are a tool. The ultimate goal is to
get to your destination. GPS is a really cool tool
to help you optimize getting where you are going. Likewise,
plans are a smart way to make sure that goals
are achievable. The plans themselves are not the most important part.

(02:36):
If you plan to train for a ten k by
running on your treadmill in the morning before work, and
you drop a long list of prescribed morning treadmill workouts,
and you come to realize that you cannot stand the
boredom of being on your treadmill, you can come up
with a different plan. Instead of running four miles on
the treadmill in the morning, you run four miles outside

(02:56):
at lunch. On a work from home day, you take
your running closed to the office and run the prescribed
three miles outside after work before it gets dark. The
plan was one way to achieve your goal. There are
probably others. GPS can often give you multiple routes, and
you can choose based on what matters to you. What

(03:19):
I especially like about this analogy is that it answers
the common criticism that life doesn't go according to plan
or go there is no point planning. This is just silly.
If you are trying to get to a meeting in
another city and along the way your GPS system encounters
a closed road and recalculates, this doesn't mean there is

(03:42):
no point in GPS. I mean, hey, we should just
get in the car and see where life takes us.
Enjoy the drive. I mean I enjoy the drive a
lot more when I have a reasonable sense where I
am going. Same with plans in the meantime, this is Laura,
Thanks for listening and here's to making the most of

(04:04):
our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've
got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at
Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a

(04:27):
production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit
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