Planning: a Personal Reflection

It is a Friday. This is the sort of day that I am obliged to write a two-pager for my blog. Having kept a consistent record of over forty articles a year, 2022 humbled me as I could only manage a meagre nine. In as much as the things that kept me from writing were beyond my control, I have made a deliberate decision to write more this year. And here we are.

There was a time in Richie Online when the end of the year would be marked with an article urging you, the dear reader, to take stock of your life and evaluate the year in line with the goals you set. That would typically be followed by another article reminding you to plan the next year in reasonable detail. The articles received mixed reactions because while some agreed with me on the need for planning, others felt like the more practical approach to life is one where you take every day as it comes. No plans, nothing. Just a human trying to make it past the next 6 o'clock. While I am more inclined towards planning life to the hour, I would understand why others feel like the whole thing is unnecessary as I was in the same boat before a life-changing day some 10 years ago.

January 12, 2013.

On that Saturday I attended a seminar organized by Henry Kachaje, who then was running a consulting company called Business Consult Africa. This seminar was about personal finances and planning and I remember paying a subsidized fee of K7000, having taken advantage of the student discount that was on offer.

You may wonder why I am claiming that the seminar was a life changer when all you know Henry Kachaje as is this MERA CEO who was sharing motivational talks on how to make K1 million from K1000. As I mentioned, this was a seminar about planning and personal finances. It was the planning bit that changed my life. I cannot recall much of the planning session’s content. One thing I remember, however, is that Henry told us to get practical. In his view, attending the seminar was just the start but putting it into practice was where it was at. In what was a thinking and planning challenge, the good man gave us twenty-two paged A4 planners with specific questions on where we wanted our lives to be in 2023! We had about 2 hours to fill those planners.

A bit of context. By the time we did this I was a 19-year-old second year student at the College of Medicine. I was yet to get into the clinical part of my training and my first relationship. There I was, with a planner trying to visualize my life beyond the 20s. In that planner, we had to write about our career lives, finances, spirituality and family. In one section we were asked to write how we envision people introducing us at a formal gathering in 2023, and boy did I fill that with pleasant things. As the naïve me, unaware of the complexities of the medical profession and the hurdles of studying and practicing medicine in Malawi were, I envisioned a clinical career in which I would specialize in cancer medicine. Family? I wrote that I would be married by now.

I cannot recollect the rest of the nonsense I wrote in that planner. The reason I remember these bits about family and career is just that I value my career and love life above the many things that go on with my life. One thing I am sure of is this that whatever life I envisioned then is not the one I am living now. 10 years ago, in that garden at Mount Soche I thought by now I would be busy treating some patient from Thyolo at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital. As I type this, I am on a break at some lonely desk having spent some hours writing code for analyzing data. Tonight, I would have hoped for dinner and a cold drink at some fancy place in the company of my wife. Know what will happen instead? I will spend another cold lonely night alone half a globe away from Blantyre. With this huge deviation from the planned life, you would wonder why that day was the day I think of as life changing. I will explain.

When I sat in that seminar, a certain part of my thinking opened up and from January 12, 2013 I gained my ability to think in the long term. It was at that time that I realized that it was not only possible but also great to have some sort of idea of what you want your life to be like in 10 or 20 years. There is one advantage to it. Once you have set your mind and put up a detailed vision of your life on paper, you make deliberate efforts to make that a reality. As such, every time you make your yearly, monthly, weekly or daily plans you try your best to feed them into that bigger plan. In other word, that long term plan becomes the pacesetter of your activities.

There have been a lot of changes in my life plan over the years. The 10 year vision I had in 2013 was completely overhauled as of 5 years ago but the change only affected the specifics. The original thinking that brought me the plan stuck around. As I started the year 2013, I realized the need for planning the next 10 years with a reasonable level of detail, and I will attempt to do that sometime within the year.

Some have expressed skepticism about the whole idea of stressing what life should be like 10 years from now. To some, the whole idea of tying goals to calendar years does not just resonate and to others it is the extended period of 10 years that they cannot work with. Others have suggested 5 years as a more reasonable alternative for a planning period. Whatever period you think is a bit realistic, I would recommend scribbling a set of goals and a bit of a plan on how to get there.

Back in November 2018, I was invited for a job interview. I did not do much in terms of preparation as I felt like I wouldn’t take the job even if it was offered. The only reason I went in there was that someone had told me that it is better to decline a job offer than to turn down an interview. An interview, she said, gives you more “interview experience”. When I walked into the interview room in with my dirty blazer, not so clean shoes and unkempt hair, I found a serious panel of young scientists. After the pleasantries, the first question I got was that of where I saw myself in two years. When I had tackled that one, the 5-year, 10-year and 20-year versions of the question followed. The rest of the interview was typical, and I left the room glad that I had taken the challenge.

A few days after the interview, I got a call that I had done well in the interview and the team was offering me the job. The start date was just a few days away. In what was an unexpected move, I ended up taking the job. One day I happened to have a casual chat with my boss who told me why I was picked in the job. “When we asked you what you want to do and be in two, five, ten and twenty years, your answers were solid. It showed that you had an actual plan and were not making things up on the spot like the other candidates. I like that kind of focus.” To be fair, I had a two and five-year plan in my books but the rest I made up on the spot. It was easy for me to cook up that information because all I had to do was extrapolate my short and intermediate term plans. That got me a wonderful job and subsequently launched me into the phase I am in my career.

While respecting the “aliyense azipanga zomwe zamusangalatsa” catch phrase, I would like to challenge you to think 10 or more years into the future and let that guide your yearly, monthly, weekly, and daily plans. It may sound like a nerdy thing to do but it is as practical as it is beneficial.

Mr Kachaje took pictures of all of us writing the plans in the garden on that Saturday morning. When we were done with the writing, he took all the planners and told us he would keep them and remind us about them in 10 years. The 10 years between January 12, 2013, and yesterday have been bittersweet. I do not have the career path and family I imagined, but I am glad I attended that seminar. I am looking forward to getting an email of that picture and the hard copy of that planner from Mr Kachaje, who still has my respect to this day. There was a bit about business and making big bucks, but I don't think I paid much attention to that. Perhaps that is why I am still broke to this day. 

Assuming that he is not too busy keeping the country from spiraling into a bunch of fuel queues again; and that he will be kind enough to return those 10-year plans, I will be glad to laugh at those things I wrote before the clinical years messed up my handwriting. I cannot wait to see what the naïve, teenage me thought life would be like pushing thirty. Whatever it is that I find in that notebook, I am glad I went to the seminar. I look forward to writing another 10-year plan. This time it will be realistic.

Happy weekend!