Yesterday I was thinking about the week ahead: its duties, its responsibilities and its work. I like to enter my week with a plan: it helps me to look over the lay of the land, to foresee possible problems ahead, and to address those problems before I am enmeshed in them. Making a plan is generally a good idea: but it can be a double-edged sword.

A plan does help me to accomplish (or at least attempt to accomplish) the most important things in my day and in my life. But a plan can change its face: its helpful demeanor can transform into the ugly countenance of a slave driver: demanding strict compliance even amid circumstances which have clearly demonstrated the necessity of a change of plan. How does one find a balance between persevering with a stated plan and abandoning that plan in favor of a revised strategy?

First, realize the limitations of a plan. A plan does not guarantee the accomplishment of a goal. A plan does not insure the cooperation of anything in the natural universe. Also, a plan does not grant ease or smoothness to the pursuit, it just establishes an order and priority of actions.

Second, plans are not static (because life is not static). Plans function as a framework or scaffolding to hang and support the important planks of a day and a life. Plans can, and do, and should change in order to accomplish goals.

Third, the plan is not the goal. The goal determines the plan and the adherence to it or the scrapping of it. The plan is to help in the attaining of the goal. The plan is subject to the goal. The plan must also be subject to re-evaluation.

Fourth, the plan is not going to do the work: I am going to do the work. Making a plan is not synonymous to executing the plan. The existence of a plan does not ensure its accomplishment. The plan provides an order of action, but I am the one who must take action: I am the activator, the moving force.  It takes hard work, thought, perseverance and discipline to work a plan.

I like to enter my week with a plan. Yet, as I list and catalog my duties, draw up my schedule and make my plans, I musts realize that I’m just at the starting point. The plan is just the beginning. Life lies before me, all un-lived. And now comes the working out of the plan. I must enter the trenches: get dirty, fall, get up again, work, sweat, take a break, re-evaluate and work some more – I must work through the plan to the goal.