Tag: proactive

How do you plan your goals?

Planning goals, now there is a conundrum if ever I heard one. If I really want / require / need something then there is a modicum of thought and planning that goes into it, otherwise most of my goals are on the fly as they say, whimsical to many and probably with no planning at all.

Things like holidays and breaks away are the wife’s domain and she does that most competently, I just pass some money her way when she needs it, so I don’t really get involved there.

Personal goals for me are pretty much medium to long term and I don’t go over the top in achieving them according to any time scale. If they occur then that’s good, if not I’m not really that bothered. I have nothing planned that’s life changing or affirming, to be honest, I’m quite happy with my lot.

The only goal I’m really spending some time in planning is my pending retirement. It’s been on the cards for a couple of years now and will probably be a few more years yet, unless Lady Luck intervenes and allows me to close that door and enter through a new one any time soon. But even here I have no time scale, it will happen when it happens.

I guess this is why I am not a planner for my company as timelines and schedules are not really my thing as they say.

Things such as days out are always off the cuff, last minute, and here I am pretty good at putting together a last minute schedule. This is something I am good at, and ties in with my work. At work I’m always responding to issues that occur on the rail network and have to have a plan in place out of reactive necessity, not really having the pleasure of being able to draft a plan in advance of such a set of events.

That’s where i can excel, I guess that’s why I’ve been in this role for the last 25+ years, we have planners for the proactive stuff and I’m there for the reactive stuff, applying the big Elastoplast if you like. However, you always learn from these incidents and therefore fine tune activities accordingly, so if they ever occur again you can apply a different sticking plaster if you like. You learn and adapt, reactive response allows you to do that, you are not working to someone else’s plan, a plan that is just put together to satisfy auditors, and has not even been prepared by an experienced individual in the first place. Railway management is good at doing this, incompetence reigns supreme!

So in a nutshell my goals are pretty much reactive and get put into place as they occur. This is the same in my life outside of work and I guess this is a result of how I am at work. It can’t be all that bad as it seems to work well with me across all areas of my life.

So I’m not going to change just now, am I?

Here’s to that impending retirement, roll on I say.

Have a superb day.