Plan On It
I read this online the other day: “Cleveland police say an 18-year-old serial carjacker was arrested after his accomplice couldn’t drive a stick shift — even with some coaching from the victim.” This was a “serial carjacker,” an experienced hand at such nefarious activities, I suppose. I also suppose that nowhere in his crime plan was the possibility that the chosen car would be a stick shift. I also suppose that there was no “plan.” Scientists have supported what I suspected while teaching high school for nearly four decades and raising four children. Most young people do not like to plan. Planning is a learned activity. Something about the “area within the mid-dorsolateral frontal cortex located in the frontal lobe has been implicated as playing an intrinsic role in both cognitive planning and associated executive traits such as working memory.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning Apparently this part of the brain is not fully developed in adolescents. I believe it. Friday nights, my own kids decide they want to “do something” with their high school friends. Of course I can only hear one side of the phone conversation, but, in those days it was easy to fill in the blanks, sort of like those old Mad Lib games.
“Hi, Jean, whatcha doing tonight?”…..
“Yeah, I was thinking of going to the movies, too. We should do something.”….
“I’ll call Matt and see if he wants to go. He can drive.”
An hour later.
“Matt can’t drive. He’s grounded. But Mary can.”….
“Which movie?”….
“Saw that one. How about that vampire flick? I’ll call Mary and see if she’s seen it.”
An hour later.
“Mary saw the vampire movie. She wants her sister and boyfriend to join us.”….
“Yeah, too late for the movies. Mary’s sister doesn’t like movies anyway.”…
“So what do you wanna do? Go bowling?”….
“Oh. Why doesn’t Mary’s boyfriend like bowling?”….
“Well, call Mary and see what she wants to do.”
Thirty minutes later.
“Why don’t you all come over here and we’ll watch some stupid thing on tv? My parents will make popcorn.”
And that was fine with us. Of all the panoramic possibilities of what they could be doing, sitting in our family room munching popcorn and complaining about how stupid the world is was certainly an acceptable, even cherished, choice. Come to think of it, when we gather with friends now, we do the same thing, only with alcohol present.
The high school cinema course I taught included a project for making a documentary–student choice of what to make a documentary about. I required a storyboard and shooting script….a plan. I showed them Alfred Hitchcock’s detailed storyboard for the bi-plane scene in North by Northwest. Didn’t matter. I still got a great deal of pushback.
“Aw, Mr. Maltese, can’t we just take the camera and shoot the documentary?!!! We know what we want to do!” Some groups would turn in a sloppy, careless script (which I evaluated as part of their grades), and I would give them a time limit to actually shoot the film. I watched as, invariably, they would spend the allotted time arguing over camera angles and movement. “Time’s up gang.”
“Aw, Mr. Maltese, we didn’t have time. We wanted it to be like the Blair Witch Project. You see that movie? They just went out and shot the movie.”
Yes, I had seen the Blair Witch Project. The movie looked like a camera was given to some young people who, planless, went out to shoot a movie. It was no Hitchcock.
I am probably being unfair in depicting only young people as non-planners. John Cassavetes, the actor, commented, “I’m a great believer in spontaneity because I think planning is the most destructive thing in the world.” Mr. Cassavetes was nominated for three Oscars. Maybe if he had planned a little….Just saying. And whole bodies of adults seem to have difficulty planning. For eight years one party railed against a particular health care plan, and, in those eight years, the alternative plan they came up with does not demonstrate careful planning…just saying.
Apparently differently cultures approach planning and execution differently. The Japanese will spend an incredible amount of time planning, but then run through the project staying on schedule and not deviating from the plan. Americans plan less and, during the execution of the project, are more inclined to deviate from the plan and explore possibilities. These two tactics apparently cause some consternation when both cultures collaborate.
People have debated the merits of planning for ages. Here are some thoughts on the topic:
- You can do irrefutably impossible things with the right amount of planning and support from intelligent and hardworking people and pizza. Scott M. Gimple
- Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning. Gloria Steinem
- In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you’re doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing. E. L. Doctorow
- Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now. Alan Lakein
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/planning.html
I liked the last quote by Mr. Lakein, but then I read another quote by him. “People don’t plan to fail. They fail to plan.” With all due respect to Mr. Lakein, I think this witticism does not hold water. Of course people do not plan to fail. Who does? Napoleon: “Okay, men, we are going to invade Russia and try to take Moscow at the worst time of year. Most of you will die on the retreat home. We won’t take Moscow. Ready? Get your gear. Merde.” Or Custer: “We’re going to attack the village with over three thousand warriors who will be hopping mad. Most of us, perhaps all of us, will be wiped out. That’s the plan. Bugler, blow the charge command. Giddyap!” Even King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail did not plan to fail with the ruse of the Trojan Rabbit. Sir Bevedere simply forgot an important element of the strategy. “Well, now, uh, Lancelot, Galahad and I wait until nightfall and then leap out of the rabbit taking the French by surprise. Not only by surprise but totally unarmed!”
In order to teach the way I taught, intense planning was necessary. Despite the summers and weekends spent developing learning units, I had to learn to adapt and adjust on the fly. One of my favorite maxims which I totally embrace, is the one by Allen Saunders: “Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.” I do not have the space to enumerate the number of times I thought I was in control, planning like crazy, only to have nature/life intervene and cause me to rethink and redirect my efforts. My class is humming along, according to plan, when the monthly fire drill goes off and we spend the next ten minutes outside standing in the snow. While the students are flapping their arms trying to stay warm, I am re-planning and adjusting on the fly. Unexpectedness happens in our daily lives as well. We have prepared a grocery list to shop in our favorite supermarket. Items on the list are arranged by the order of the aisles they will be found in. The supermarket doors swing open electronically, and we confidently march in only to realize that the store has rearranged the aisles. Cereals are now in what was the soup aisle, and dill pickles now reside in the cat food section. Talk about adjusting on the fly! Times like these test our flexibility and adaptiveness to change.
Ultimately the difficulty with planning and plans is that human beings are usually the ones executing them. That truth comes with a vast collection of complex factors. As one of my favorite soothsayers observed, “If you don’t know where you are going,
you’ll end up someplace else.” Yogi Berra