Chasing rabbits

The other day, my wife and I took our dog, Peanut, for a walk. Peanut's very poorly named. She's part Aussie Shepherd and weighs in at about 65 pounds. We were told she was not going to be this big, but I digress.

As is our custom, we went to the park next to the local elementary school. When we got to the appointed spot on the trail - Peanut reminds us if we go past it - we let her off the leash, since nobody else was around. (Don't alert the authorities, I don't want to get a ticket.) At one edge of the park is a grove of trees, standing single-file next to the fence line about 30 yards long. Peanut blasted off full speed towards those trees with a definite purpose. (This is opposed to her usual random wandering.) As we saw her approach a tree in the middle of the line in full gallop, we noticed a rabbit dart out from the far end of the trees and run off. Peanut never saw it.

For me (my wife think's I'm nuts or have undiagnosed OCD), this incident provided an in-the-flesh example of a few commonly missed steps in planning.

1. Good planning has to start with determining the desired outcome. But, it's not enough to just know what you want the outcome to be. You have to know how you'll recognize the outcome. Peanut got exactly what her plan called for: flushing the creature responsible for that scent out of the trees. But she never knew it. She didn't recognize the outcome when it happened.
2. It's more than just the recognition, though. It's also about building confidence in the plan. Making the effort to determine the desired outcome and figuring out how you'll know it when you see it, instills an expectation of success. When this plan works, I will know it, because this will be the outcome. This is where we differ from dogs. Dogs commit to the plan. We humans fret and worry about the plan. Sometimes this keeps us from fully committing. We think, "Really? That's the plan? I'm just going to run full blast into the trees and a rabbit's going to pop out? I don't know. I guess I'll try it." Then we tie our shoes, straighten our socks, stretch, and finally jog over half-heartedly.
3. Figure out what the following step will be before starting the current step. You don't necessarily have to think 20 moves ahead like a Chess Grand Master. Things normally change in that time, so that's often unproductive. But you should know what to do after this step. Paying attention to the following step can help define the current step. For Peanut, the thought process could have been: "My next step, after zooming off at the trees, will be to chase the rabbit. That means I have to know which way to go after running to the trees. Hmm, instead of just zooming all-out directly into the trees, I'm going to look up when I'm halfway there. If the rabbit pops out, I'll be able to change direction and catch it."

These steps can help in building any plan, whether that's saving for the family trip to Disney World, remodeling the bathroom, losing weight, or dropping 10 strokes off your golf score.

(No animals were hurt in the production of this blog post. Had Peanut actually caught the rabbit, she wouldn't have known what to do with it. My wife would have cried. I would have fainted. We all would have been grossed out.)