Remember when you were a kid, all that time you spent thinking about what you were going to be when you grew up? Remember “up” showing up, and still wondering what you were going to be when you grew up?
This photo is from my graduation and commissioning on 2 June 2001, getting my diploma from the Dean of Academics at West Point. From there, I headed off to be a brand spanking new second-lieutenant in the officer basic course. This is what I was doing when September 11th happened.
Back then, we thought this was probably the toughest thing we were ever going to have to do – participate in a field training exercise. Loaded down with blank ammunition and MILES gear {quick translation: military laser tag}, roughing it out in the woods. We both hated it and loved it at the same time. Then things changed, and we all had to do some growing up. Quickly.
Looking back on all of that now, on all the changes that all of our plans went through, on how we adapted to how our world shifted, I have a really hard time answering questions like, “Where do you think you’ll be five years from now?” Shawnette, a friend from my analysis course, asked our little dinner group that question a while back. She’s going to be retiring in that time frame and she’s trying to plan out her life after Army. That kind of got my brain kickstarted, because while I have goals over the next few years, nothing is really set in stone. But as I look back on my life and how I’ve planned, I realize that nothing can be.
I originally applied to West Point along with half a dozen other schools because I was looking for a pre-med program. After attending for a while, I realized that I really loved training and leadership, switched to become an operations research major and commissioned into the Corps of Engineers. After eleven years of being an engineer, I switched my branch to become a systems analyst when I discovered that was a better fit for my skills and for the kind of problems I wanted to solve.
Those were all decisions under my control. Things like 9/11 and the current drawdown of forces aren’t, and you just can’t plan around things like that. There have also been last minute opportunities, like the job opening that first led me to Hawaii, like the opportunity that led me to defer grad school for a year to become a deployed strategic planner, like the job that’s sending us back to Hawaii, like meeting my husband and getting married, that would have thrown a more organized and structured plan completely off.
So how do you plan for situations you just can’t plan?
Here’s the thing. Any good strategic plan is 45% plan, 45% contingency, and 10% knowing where you’re trying to go really, really well, and winging it. Those aren’t hard numbers, those are just how I think of them.
In my case, that 45% plan was the outer framework. I knew when I was growing up that I was going to go to a four-year university, get a professional degree, and get a job that challenged me, allowed me to contribute and have an impact, and didn’t just stick me in an office cubicle somewhere. That part never changed. I just filled in the details as I went, figured out the decision points, looked down the line at the impacts those decisions might have, made the choice, and made sure I had enough information about what I was doing down the line that if something crazy came up, I could improvise. Getting a graduate degree from UVa wasn’t on the original plan, but I got the chance, so I took it.
I don’t understand planners who think they can map out step by step what’s going to happen. They craft extremely specific scenarios when all they have are probabilities and likelihoods. But there are also dangers in just following your impulses. That’s like dropping into a new city without a map and assuming you’re going to be safe, happy, and have a successful trip. I like to live my life in the middle, and that’s where the mix of right-brain left-brain comes in, the art and the science.
Make the framework of the plan. Sketch out options. Know where the decision points are. Then improvise.
Just to give you an idea, this is how I’m looking at my life for the next five or so years. I’m applying to a couple of programs that will let me go back to school and get my Ph.D. I’ll know sometime over the next couple of years whether that’s going to happen or not, and that will affect a lot of our subsequent planning.
Five years from now…
There’s a 90% chance I’ll still be in the Army. I’ve served for twelve years now, and I’m serving three more in Hawaii. It would take the opportunity of a lifetime to get me to resign from the Army when I only have five years to serve until I’m eligible for retirement, given that those retirement benefits will make it very easy to take care of my family’s health. I still factor in that slight chance that something might come up, either the opportunity of a lifetime or a family situation or injury or something that might make it impossible for me to keep serving, but that’s a very small percentage.
I may be going back to school for my Ph.D. I’ll find out whether or not I’ve got the program sometime over the next couple years, and if I do, after our three years in Hawaii, we’ll be heading off to university life. That’s an exciting and nerve-wracking prospect!
I may be at my next follow-on assignment if no Ph.D. I have to account for the chance I won’t be accepted to either program. Just because I think I’m smart doesn’t mean I can fool everyone else into thinking it! If that’s the case, there are a number of other jobs I could take and continue serving in at a number of different posts, but that decision won’t come around until much closer to the end of our Hawaii tour. Could this impact how long I stay in the Army? Potentially, but I haven’t gone too far down that road yet.
We may have kids. We know we want two of them, but chalk that up to things you definitely can’t plan! You get what you’re going to get when they feel like showing up, and you just cross your fingers that everything comes out all right and that you’re up to the task. Also, I haven’t been tested or anything, but what if I can’t have them?
We’ll be thinking about life after Army. Whether I retire from the Army at age forty or out into my fifties, depending on possible service, I know I’m not going to be done with careers. Scott and I have talked about it, and I want to have a second career. Dream job? I’m tech savvy and artistic and I love systems engineering and the hospitality industry. I have my eye on Disney’s industrial engineering office. Either way, we know we’d like to end up back in Orlando. Preferably at Disney, because, well, we’re just like that.
We’ll be older and, hopefully, wiser. One hopes for wisdom, but it still has to show up. Still, given the difference in my perspective between twenty and twenty-five, and even larger difference between twenty-five and thirty, I think I’m going to have learned a few things and be looking at the world differently. Okay, that’s a huge understatement.
We know we’ll be having adventures. Looking back at all the things we’ve been able to do as a team, I know Scott and I will have had some serious adventures. Five years is a ton of time. We’re talking about Las Vegas, Shanghai, Tokyo, New Zealand, London, Miami, South Africa, Atlantis in the Bahamas, and more on the dream travel list. We don’t know how we’ll manage this around cats and with the kids {oh, they’re coming along}, but we’ll figure it out! And I hope I’m cracking up my husband still as much as I did with whatever I said in this shot from our engagement photos. I’m going to try my best.
So what about you, dear friends? How are you looking at your possible futures? Are you planners, or do you prefer to live more impulsively, or are you like me, somewhere in the middle?
