As familiar as it may sound, yet millions of individuals worldwide have fallen victims of the implications of negligence to its existence in their various duty calls, businesses, trades, or contract execution, as might be the case.
It has arguably become imperative to emphasize on the above topic with the seriousness it requires, taking into cognizance the inevitable role of planning in all our endeavours. It suffices to assert that we need to take time to do justice to the issue at hand.
A planned odyssey begets a defined destination. Hence, unplanned one invariably leads to an undefined endpoint. This isn’t a poem whose lyric requires a narrator to bring its comprehension to the audience. It’s simply a sentence that bears a straightforward and self-explanatory meaning.
An odyssey could be described as a journey, and every journey possesses a starting point and an endpoint, otherwise known as a destination. On the other hand, a defined destination is an endpoint that is known and anticipated, contrary to the one that was encountered by accident. So, it’s stated that a ‘planned odyssey begets a defined destination’, meaning literarily that a journey that was planned invariably leads to an anticipated endpoint.
Take time to plan, knowing full well that it’s the origin of every journey, whether marriage, career, leadership, or what have you. If you embarked on a marriage odyssey without embracing a planning session, you must crash in the long run. Marriage is an institutional journey that’s in need of a very careful analysis by those who intend to embark on it.
Same is applicable to leaders who failed to embrace planning before venturing into leadership position. Leadership is a very serious business that must commence with a rigorous planning phase. In the preliminary phase, you are expected to define what you intend to achieve as a leader, hence must strictly outline your primary and specific objectives. You don’t just venture into leadership because you saw a friend or relative doing so.
The career aspect isn’t exceptional. Career pursuit, progress and prospects are highly labour-intensive odyssey. In other words, you must be mentally and physically ready to partake in it. It’s a journey that requires virtually everything from you, to include time, finance, mental and intellectual abilities, and physical wellbeing. Hence, a thorough planning session that requires critical thinking is inevitably needed prior to embarking on such a journey.
A career journey is one, in which every participant must possess an independent mindset. You must truly define your needs as a person and understand the kind of professional you aim to become in the future. This would enable you develop a logical mindset, which is required for the intended journey.
Be bold enough to comprehend the journey you are about to embark on, so you can prepare a good planning towards arriving at the desired destination. Take time to think and endeavour to conceptually explore the underlying benefits of the awaited journey; this would help you prepare yourself in all ramifications as expected. You are needed to comprehend every route to ply on, as the journey progresses.
An undefined destination is encountered by accident. An apt planning would enable you avert such a destination. It suffices to say that a proper planning is unavoidable if you truly wish to actualize your goal. The “accident” in this case is attributed to carelessness or lack of vision. But if your journey is well defined, it would never be visionless, or careless, as the case may be.
A sound planning session gives you the insight to realize the priorities and frivolities to be encountered during the odyssey. By so doing, you would be able to map out your scale of preference. In Economics, you dare not joke with, or undermine, the aforementioned tool, because it enables you realize how to aptly carry out all the needed tasks in your business consignment.
Planning is the only parameter that can beget a sound and wholesome scale of preference, hence the compelling need to stick strongly to it at the commencement of any project, whether educational, career, political, leadership, structural, or infrastructural. The bone of contention is that planning is the foundation or fundamental aspect of any conceived project or journey.
The reason most conceived projects fail in a country like Nigeria is usually owing to lack of planning. Sometimes, the project initiators could become confused in the process, thus would be compelled to abandon it. Yes, ‘white elephant projects’ might be as a result of corruption; but the truth is, owing to corruption, the officers in charge would overlook planning, then leading to failure when the project eventually commenced.
Planning is an avenue to critically look at the feasibility study of the intended journey. It grants the prospective partaker the needed opportunity to examine the odyssey to realize if it actually has a destination. It’s a step to know whether a conceived project is actualizable or not.
Time has come for us to have a rethink in our respective tasks and journeys, either as individuals or a group. It’s therefore high time we started seeing planning as an inevitable tool in project execution, irrespective of its type or nature. Think about it!
Fred Nwaozor writes via frednwaozor@gmail.com
