PLANS ARE NOTHING. PLANNING is EVERYTHING!

Planning is  a process of establishing a mission with clear goals as a mean to achieve them. The need for planning is often obvious and after the fact. Planning in any project is an important part of the growth, development and sustainability. Planning suggests a systematic attempt to shape the future. We all do planning in everything we do. It is our attempts to link scientific and technical knowledge into actions. Planning entails making decisions and informing actions in ways that are socially rational. Good planning requires special skills and perspectives allowing us, the decision-makers to understand the challenges we are facing and applying the most effective solution to a problem.

In order to achieve success, we need to have a plan; it either being a short term plan or a long term plan. Short term plans are something we all do on our daily basis and are easier to achieve compared to long term plans. For an instance, we attending classes and going to class on time is our daily short term plan that we go through 5 days a week. Long term plans are also known as strategic plans and are used to achieve a long range vision. For example, when I decided to enroll in ALAM, my long term plan was to graduate from the academy and be ready to embark on a rewarding career on board ship and later on start up a business and be my own boss. The convocation ceremony is what we look forward to as it is not a celebration of us successfully graduating as a deck officer but it is also the recognition of all our hard work.

In both methods, planning, short term or long term, is necessary to achieve top notch results. And we will be able to achieve those results when we know our own strengths, weakness, capability and most important who is our support system. Strengths are frequently built up and are made the key to our achievement of our mission and objectives. Weakness are the internal uniqueness that has the potential to limit achievements of our mission, goals and objectives. Weakness may be so significant that they may need to be addressed before any further planning steps are taken. For example, if our weakness is playing Mobile Legends till late night and attending classes late or worst skipping them; the needed measures is to finish gaming early or to have few alarm clocks around you that would shake your cells up in the morning for class. I am just pulling your leg. You and I will both continue playing Mobile Legends and also be on time for class because we are good at planning. 

To summarize everything I mentioned above, planning starts after dreams, needs, desires and ideas that take birth in our life all the time. It helps keeping us from spending time on a task that won't bring us any closer to our goals. Planning in our life, gives us a sense of control. If you create the plan then you get to make choices and decisions, rather than leaving things up to chance or worse yet, letting others make decisions for you without a say from you. Planning is a key to success and happiness. 

If you do not have a plan for your own life, you may end up following someone else plan and forget about your own dreams.

Napoleon Hill once said " First comes thought; then organization of that thought, into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination." 

This is what planning can inspire you to plan in your life, so that you can create the happiness and success you wish for.

Thank you.