Plan Your Work

I wrote a blog March 16, 2009 titled “Get to Work.” It was a summary of a book I read back then titled It’s Called Work for a Reason by a wild looking guy named Larry Winget. It was a way out there book with the primary purpose of disputing every leadership book and theory ever developed. Winget’s thesis was that people just don’t work anymore. I have to agree with Winget; for the most part.

As I said in my March post, “I’m a worker. I’ve always been a worker. My father instilled this mentality in me. I don’t know very many people that work any harder than my father and his brothers. They grew-up in a day and age on a small West Texas farm when you worked to make a living. You milked the cows before school and you drove the tractor until dark (while getting an education in-between). I know my life was far from difficult like theirs, but one thing my dad did expect was hard work. From nine to five he worked at a bank. So we primarily worked on the farm and ranch on the weekends and any time the bank was closed (Labor Day had an entirely different meaning in my family). In the summer we either got a job or we worked on the farm. Vacations pretty much amounted to a long weekend trip to Dallas to watch the Ranger’s play and a day at Six Flags.” So Winget obviously hit most of the right buttons with me.

I’ve always liked the saying “Plan Your Work and Work Your Plan.” But, like Winget, I’m not sure we are missing an extremely important component to in our strategy. Proverbs 16:9 reads “We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps.” I’m a planner. If my wife actually read my blogs she’d have some snide remark to insert here. I’m detail oriented. Again, insert snide remark. I like to work on the details every step of the way. I still carry a day planner. And, I use a calendar on my iPhone. And, I use Evernote on my iPhone. You get the picture. However, this verse makes me think I may be taking the wrong approach, or at least forgetting a very important ingredient; PRAYER!

All my planning in the world obviously cannot make something happen. Now, at the same time I don’t think the right approach is to fly by the seat of my pants. You know, pray and then sit around and wait for a miracle. I had a customer once that believe he could just pray, hang out at the coffee shop, and farm through the windshield in his pick-up. Obviously he was wrong. Planning is important and I believe it is relevant to success. We just have to make sure to allow God to be an ingredient (the most important ingredient) and allow Him to enact the plan.

So, step 1) Pray; step 2) Plan; step 3) Pray; step 4) Work!

Aspire to new heights.