A Mason's Work

[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.
[06:19] Let's just set on the beautiful婦 for dauntinging静寺, and to cover it in your
[06:31] gloves.
[06:33] So let's try this for the mostra ofenty of desired mode here to ====
[06:37] The mant przysz sought.