After reading Laurie's excellent post The Transformative Power of a Planning System, I started thinking about how I started planning, and how I agree with her that I find it difficult to imagine not doing something like this in some form or another. From a fairly young age, I always had a book, notebook and a pencil case with me, so at some point the notebook started to include scribbles about things to be done alongside drawings and other random notes. I'm not sure how old I was when I started planning as such, but it definitely helped me when exams were coming up, so I suppose I've always taken it for granted.
During a recent visit to my Mum-in-law's house, she obviously had lots on her mind due to a potential future change in family living arrangements. However, like can often happen, she had only heard the news third hand, so was waiting to speak directly to the person involved. We had a long conversation about this, which mainly involved her worrying about and considering all of the changes that might be needed. Eventually I suggested that maybe it might be useful to write all of these thoughts down to get it our of her head, as she admitted that it was keeping her awake at night. I explained to her about doing a brain dump (also called a mind sweep), but she didn't seem convinced as it sounded like she felt that she needs answers to her questions before getting any benefit from writing it all down... She does use a wall calendar and also writes ad-hoc to lists on scraps of paper, but I suppose maybe a brain dump was a bit too different for her to seriously consider right now, especially when she was feeling a bit stressed.
Have you had any recent discussions with family, friends or colleagues about planning?
And as always on Fridays, please feel free to discuss anything organiser related. I hope that you have a great weekend.
