Plan Your Work, Work Your Plan

I grew up in the 1960s on a small farm in rural Kansas. Opportunities for recreation were virtually non-existent. I heard some of the city kids (the “city” nearby had a population of less than 3,000) talk of amusement parks and canoe trips and visits to McDonald’s for a $.15 hamburger. All those were outside my frame of reference.

But like any kid, I was always on the lookout for an adventure, something out of the ordinary. This story happened when I was probably 8 years old, and for reasons which will become clear, it has been with me for the last 60+ years. You can read the original, and other stories like it, in The Alligator Wrestler’s 52-Week Devotional Guide, available at www.alligatorpublishing.com or wherever books are sold.

A Saturday Excursion

I pestered Dad to take me someplace fun. In my mind, “fun” was hiking or camping or exploring. Going to a movie or an amusement park was entirely outside my experience.

One day, he promised to take me to see a neighbor’s farm pond. We would take a picnic lunch along, just the two of us. It was planned for the following Saturday afternoon.

I was delirious with anticipation.

Starting at the beginning of the week, I engaged in careful planning. Which jeans should I wear? Which shirt?

My work boots, of course, because they would be rugged enough to withstand whatever dangerous and adventurous terrain we might encounter. (Probably the choices were limited to either the boots or the sneakers, anyway.)

A web belt would be good, to carry the canteen.

A hatchet and a sheath knife were necessities.

A bandana; maybe two, in the event of a cut or scrape that needed tending.

My canvas campaign hat, a floppy affair from an Army surplus store.

A compass. The glass was cracked, but it would still point out North.

Gloves, of course. Everyone needs a pair of leather gloves.

How many pocketknives? And which ones? I had 4 to choose from, all appropriately dulled to prevent inadvertent injury.

The decisions were excruciating, as was the interminable wait for Saturday afternoon.

On Friday night, I meticulously laid everything out on one side of my bed, then crawled under the sheet from the other side, careful to avoid disturbing the array.

“Prior planning prevents poor performance”

There is a somewhat more crude version of that bit of alliterative advice, but I prefer the cleaner recital. Something internal to us humans recognizes the need to plan things ahead. To be clear, my 8-year-old exercise had very little to do with the weekend venture with Dad, but I felt the need to DO SOMETHING, and the meticulous planning seemed to scratch that itch.

I could not control much in my world, but at least I could decide which pocketknives to take along.

A 2018 article in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology by a pair of researchers (whose names I can neither spell nor pronounce – I will call them “H&R”) highlights the importance of planning.

“…Plan-oriented individuals,” conclude H&R, are “more successful in life than those who are reluctant to make plans…” That is not exactly rocket science, but it should come as no surprise that once we enter retirement, we suddenly become rocket-science-unaware.

When we were working and building the career, planning was part of the deal. If you are responsible to sponsor the vendor conference, you’d best get your plans together and execute. If you expect to participate in the new product launch, you had better come to the team meeting prepared to explain your contribution.

Once you walk out the door of your business for the last time, metaphorical gold watch in hand, it becomes too easy to forget the very activities that made your career succeed. Many retirees sink into a form of lethargy. That’s to be expected – and welcomed – for a short period of adjustment. But after a few weeks off, it is probably time to set some direction.

SIPPM: Keys to success

As we have stated before in Your Best Retirement, we need to attend to the 5 key components of a successful retirement: Spiritual, Mental, Physical, Social and Financial. (I think of these as a simple acronym, having taken some liberties with the terminology: SIPPM: Spiritual, Intellectual, Physical, People, Money.)

Pursuing some of these is easier to plan than others, but none of them is difficult. And therein lies the great risk: The easier the task is to finish, the easier it is put it off.

For example: I would love to read William Manchester’s authoritative 3-volume biography of Winston Churchill, The Last Lion. It has only been out since 1983 – that would be 41 years ago now – and I have yet to pick it up.

I am quite sure that used hardback copies are available at reasonable prices; the cost does not hold me back. It would be so easy to pick these up… and so they sit at the bottom of the “someday, but not today” list. Enriching insights and an expanded worldview remain neglected, still swimming around, forlornly, in the bottom of the bucket of unrealized intentions.

In earlier YBR posts, we have discussed the Curious List: Those activities or interests you would like to chase but have not yet begun to fight. So, in the immortal words of that imminent social philosopher Paul Simon, “Make a new plan, Stan!”

Challenge Question

We all need some motivation to keep the SIPPM list in balance. It is easy to work on the easy ones. For you, maybe it’s a no-brainer to maintain your social contacts – the Wednesday night poker game, for example, which one of my dubious role models from long ago referred to as Choir Practice. He and his close buddies had turned it into a religious exercise. However, you may find a different dimension of SIPPM more challenging.

Here is a spin on motivation you might find useful, and it is this week’s Challenge Question:

What are you willing to spend, in terms of both money and time, to identify a plan for a robust approach to your SIPPM goals? (Spiritual, intellectual, physical, people and money.)

Seriously, download the Challenge Tracker and write down your answers. We won’t hold you to it, but it is a useful exercise. As another of my role models from 40 years ago used to say: Make a plan, and then put shoe-leather on it!

Download the Challenge Tracker by clicking the link below.

What does the Scripture say?

He who is noble plans noble things, and on noble things he stands.

Isaiah 32:8 (ESV)

Saturday arrived at last

And I know you’re waiting for the outcome of my 8-year-old expectation for a Saturday excursion. It’s a difficult story, because most readers are waiting for the disaster. Dad’s going to forget, or get busy, or put it off. When will the other shoe drop?

You can quit worrying. It has a happy ending.

When the promised day came, we rode in the pickup truck to a field probably all of two miles away. Parking at the edge of the gravel road, we carried the picnic basket Mom had put up for us.

We climbed over the barbed wire fence to a small farm pond near the edge of the field. There were a couple of scrawny cottonwood trees and a few fallen logs. The cattle used the pond, and the soft mud at the perimeter was trampled by hoofprints.

We sat on a log and ate ham sandwiches and beanie-wienies, washing it down with water from the canteen. We talked of the field, the farm, the old days when cowboys ran free-range cattle, when bandits and Indians were real threats.

I was in heaven, completely oblivious to how depressing the deserted place looked.

After lunch, we walked around the pond and roamed the pasture for a while, examining the tiny dam, seeing what was below it, hunting for non-existent Indian arrowheads. We made a thorough reconnoiter of maybe a whopping 5 acres of land, being ever vigilant for snakes, of which we saw exactly none.

Then, exhausted from wading through the tall grass in the hot sun, we returned to the truck and drove home.

Do I remember this event?

Like it was yesterday.

I am still writing about it 60 years later.

Thanks for joining Your Best Retirement. Download the Challenge Tracker, share the episode, and add your comments below. We’d love to hear from you. See you next time!