Planning Across Time Horizons

Show Notes

Brian uses the example of a young man drawn toward sailing or rock climbing to show how plans change across time horizons. A plan for the next ten minutes, the next day, and the next phase of life cannot all carry the same level of detail.

The 24-inch gauge becomes a way to think about present capacity, future obligations, and the need for plans to become more directional as they reach farther forward. Overprescribed plans become fragile when they require one exact future to appear.

• Using the 24-inch gauge in different seasons of life
• Planning for hobbies, obligations, and changing capacity
• Why distant plans need direction more than rigidity
• How fragile plans create avoidable failure
• Matching scope to the horizon being planned

The farther a plan reaches, the more it must leave room for reality to answer back.

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Creators and Guests

Host

Brian Mattocks

Host and Founder of A Mason's Work - a podcast designed to help you use symbolism to grow. He's been working in the craft for over a decade and served as WM, trustee, and sat in every appointed chair in a lodge - at least once :D

What is A Mason's Work?

In this show we discuss the practical applications of masonic symbolism and how the working tools can be used to better yourself, your family, your lodge, and your community. We help good freemasons become better men through honest self development. We talk quite a bit about mental health and men's issues related to emotional and intellectual growth as well.

[00:00] So as we continue talking about planning and planning as a successful way to essentially
[00:07] build your future, we're going to start to use a bit of an example.
[00:13] And it's easier for the older men listening in the audience or the older people listening
[00:18] in the audience here to understand some of these things because you've experienced them
[00:22] firsthand.
[00:22] But for the younger guys, explore this more as a thought exercise.
[00:27] So imagine you're in your mid-20s, you're single, it's early in your career, you've
[00:33] discovered kind of a pull towards the sea.
[00:36] Maybe you want to go sailing and you really want to build that as a hobby, as a long-term
[00:42] thing.
[00:42] Or maybe it's rock climbing, right?
[00:44] You like the mountains and you want to explore the ability to climb over these obstacles.
[00:51] Something that demands skill, patience, and a relationship with conditions that you can't
[00:57] fully control.
[00:58] When you're young, you have the time, you've got the curiosity, and you have very, very
[01:02] few competing obligations.
[01:04] By any measure, being young is kind of the season of abundance.
[01:10] When we take on our 24-inch gauge in that process, when you're planning at that time, we're going
[01:18] to use it a little bit differently than if you were planning for a different stage or phase
[01:23] in your life.
[01:24] So in the immediate moment, right, when you break out the 24-inch gauge, let's look at
[01:29] the right now.
[01:30] In this situation, as that young person, with the available time you have, how much time
[01:39] are you willing to allocate towards that relative to your vocation, relative to your social obligations,
[01:45] all that kind of stuff, how much time can you allocate here?
[01:49] And to what, you know, relative to your current conditions, what does the best use of your
[01:58] time look like?
[01:59] For example, even let's say you're listening to this podcast, right?
[02:05] And you're out and you're driving around, right?
[02:08] Is now the time to break out a book and read about knots?
[02:11] Probably not.
[02:13] Please don't do this.
[02:15] When you are looking at what you can do in the moment, maybe the answer is you start reflecting
[02:23] on what you love about that project or what you love about that hobby, what you love about
[02:30] sailing.
[02:30] Maybe your present moment stuff has to be a little bit different than your tomorrow stuff,
[02:38] right?
[02:38] The plan that you have for today and the plan you have for tomorrow are different based
[02:42] on how much visibility you have into your everyday life.
[02:48] When we look across different time horizons, it requires us to change and grow and expand
[02:56] our scope.
[02:57] So when we're planning, planning for the next 10 minutes and planning for the next 24 hours
[03:04] seem very similar, but there are some nuanced differences, right?
[03:08] Planning for next six months versus the next year and a half versus the next phase of our
[03:16] life.
[03:17] And the young man example, maybe, you know, where we are now and for the foreseeable future,
[03:22] the next year, year and a half, you're kind of in that, you know, position of abundance.
[03:27] But, you know, at some point you're going to start a family probably or potentially, and
[03:31] you're going to have other obligations.
[03:33] And when you move to that phase, you have to have a much broader view into what your time
[03:40] horizons look like and what your conditions are going to look like in order to navigate
[03:46] those things successfully.
[03:48] You don't want your plans to be dropped by the wayside or a lack of thinking through some
[03:58] easy and obvious things like, hey, when I have a third of the time in my future than I do
[04:05] now to do these things, what can I do to continue to pursue that hobby even with less time?
[04:12] When we increase our scope over time and look at a much broader set of conditions and capacities
[04:21] and capabilities and willingness and emotional content and all that kind of stuff, we begin to
[04:26] realize that what has to happen with our plans as they move forward in time is they have to, in many
[04:34] ways, get a little bit more vague.
[04:37] They have to be less specific and more directional.
[04:42] And that's okay, right?
[04:45] When you overprescribe a future to like, hey, I'm going to be at this specific place at this
[04:51] specific time, three and a half years from now, that's really trying to do something that
[05:00] is really probably not advisable.
[05:05] That's not to say you can't.
[05:06] Not to say it's impossible.
[05:07] I'm not trying to tell you what you can and can't do.
[05:09] What I'm suggesting to you is as you make plans, when you look through the future plans
[05:16] you're making, the more rigid they are, the more inflexible they are, the more they require
[05:22] a very specific set of conditions to work, the more likely they are to fail.
[05:28] They become fragile.
[05:30] And as they become fragile and edified, they stop working.
[05:33] And again, the peril to that we talked about yesterday is when your plans stop working,
[05:38] you begin to take that potentially and internalize it and turn into a whole series of negative
[05:44] things that erode your ability to perform in the future.
[05:47] So looking out over these horizons with goals and hobbies and plans in mind, all that kind
[05:53] of stuff, think about the increase in scope over time that you're going to have to have
[06:00] in your plans to accommodate those failure modes, to accommodate the success mode, to accommodate
[06:07] all of the things you're going to need to prepare for so that your plan can survive contact with
[06:12] reality.
[06:12] And have time again.
[06:16] And I'll see you later in your genial status.
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[06:31] gloves.
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