Why Everyone Needs a Backup Plan
Everyone should have a plan, right?
But…
What if Plan A doesn’t work?
What if someone doesn’t agree with Plan A?
What if you can’t afford Plan A?
It doesn’t matter what the ‘if’ is, you will never think of all the possible ‘if’s.
What matters is that you have a way of working out what to do instead. Whether ‘instead’ means changing tack entirely, or just finding an alternate method of getting the same result. This is Plan B and without it Plan A can become Plan Zero. The more ambitious Plan A is the greater the need for a Plan B.
There are other Plan B’s out there – I’d probably call out this one doing good work in the climate action space alongside the likes of Client Earth
This is also Plan B and I highly recommend this too (but for entertainment purposes only)
The case for Plan D (Dead Time Plans)
Alongside a Plan B for every major Plan A, it’s useful to have one or two Plan D’s, otherwise known as Dead Time Plans. Dead Time Plans come in really handy if you want to avoid being sucked down into a social media black hole when you find yourselves with a spare 5 minutes to fill.
Waiting for the kettle to boil? At a doctor’s appointment? Waiting for the adverts to finish during the middle of a Youtube video?
Ignore the nagging call of Candy Crush, Insta or TikTok. Make better use of your time by reading about topics you actually have an interest in. Use something like Feedly and build your own newsfeed, adding in blogs (like this one) and the news sources you trust for things you care about, in my case the likes of Pitchfork and The Conversation.
Dead Time Plans are useful for travel too. It’s well worth taking the time to search out some podcast recommendations from friends and have at least one or two downloaded. That way you’ll be ready to go in the event you end up in the back of beyond with no signal (or find yourself on an East Coast mainline train).
Meditation as a Dead Time Plan
Saving the best for last, dead time can be put to excellent use by simply meditating for a few short moments, allowing you to reclaim some mental bandwidth with the time that would otherwise be lost in unstructured thought.
Make sense? Let me know in the comments section if you don’t think so.
(Different) More tomorrow.
Donovan