Imagination and Planning

Many people think of planning as a boring process. (HINT: I am one of them.) Truth is, it usually is boring. But that isn't planning's fault. It's our fault. Once we get older we believe planning is boring and so we plan in very boring ways. And yet if you watch kids plan they do it with incredible imagination and have a blast as well. Have you ever seen a small girl have a tea party with her stuffed animals? Very meticulous planning goes into these parties, who is going to sit where, who is invited, what they'll be serving, etc. It's play and the kid has a great time doing it.

The reason kids know how to make planning fun is because they've kept something most adults forget to use and especially forget to use at work, their imagination. If you know how to use your imagination planning is fun because anything can happen.

Steps to activate your imagination:

1) Leave the office or board room, these places are horribly unimaginative.
2) Visit Uncyclopedia, it is an encyclopedia full of misinformation and utter lies.
3) Think about how and when you used to use your imagination.

Here is an example of how I used to plan as a child:

When I was a kid, (2nd to 5th grade-ish), most of my planning was dedicated to fort building. My best friend PJ and I loved to build forts in the woods behind my house. Some kids I knew had parents that built them forts that were really elaborate. One kid I remember, Brandon Stil, had the best fort. It even had electricity and running water. We hated Brandon and his electric.

Our fort on the other hand was very basic. It consisted of a piece of wood, not even good wood, and particle board which absorbed water, turned moldy and bent downward from our weight. The board had nails anchoring it into a camphor tree that split off into three directions as it rose from the ground. But because the particle board got so wet and soft the wood would always break off from where it was nailed to the tree and would have to be reattached.

There were a few two by fours we nailed to the tree that would take you to the next level of the fort. Two branches that went outward and then split like a wishbone parallel to the ground, had a few mismatched pieces of wood nailed to it that formed the second level of the fort.

From here we could survey the area to watch for intruders. Our thinking was that the fort could be invaded at any minute. Why do kids love to pretend people are after them? We'd often spend time with binoculars looking from the our second level perch waiting to sound the warning alarm, which was really just a smoke detector we mounted inside a box. We'd equipped the fort with a zip tie that would take us to safety if we needed to perform an emergency evacuation. Some afternoons we just practiced our emergency evacuation routines.

In addition to keeping look out for would be assassins we spent much of our time building booby traps to stop them. Our booby traps included holes with palm fronds over them with upward pointing pitch forks at the bottom. We equipped the trail to the fort with fishing line tied from one tree across the the path.



><(("> JEFFY