INSTEAD OF WASTING TODAY
“One day, I want to be a very
successful and rich person!” or “I’ll set up a business someday…”
Sound familiar? One
hears this all the time: from our classmates, friends, and relatives.
But if they ask them if they have an action plan to achieve their vision,
would they give you an intelligent answer? They will probably tell you
bluntly, “Wala eh next time na ‘yon.” That is when one sees the
importance of having a plan especially for aspiring business people (which in
the long run include just about everyone as it is probably safe to say that we
will all dabble into some kind of ‘racket’ someday) and hopefully to inspire
them to start coming up with plans for the future starting today. I just
want to put this in the context of current advances in technology and business.
I’ll also give a couple of caveats in that the reader may get the right
idea from these generalizations.
The Old Plan
Often, our plan would be the
same plan our parents have given us since the beginning of the industrial age:
“Child, study hard, get good grades, then get a good job with a high
salary and lots of benefits. After that save hard and you’ll be
successful.” Does it sound logical? For bestselling author Robert
Kiyosaki, this is not a very logical path as following this may drive you into
a circle of work with no chance of advancement. Kiyosaki calls this a
‘rat race’. Definitely, if we follow this plan to the letter, we would
run out of options before long.
Robert
Kiyosaki, Financial Guru and Bestselling Author
Saving money in a savings
account is hardly a more effective option. Normally banks charge 1%
interest, but just look at the country’s 6% inflation rate plus 12% e-vat,
making saving in the bank a losing proposition. Your money will rot sit there
and not be of use to you. (Can you even trust financial institutions with your
money? Maybe they will lose all their assets after a minor scandal and
close down. It makes you wonder if it is better to just keep your savings
under a pillow, does it not?)
Some plan to get a job first
and gain all the necessary experience there first and money to start a
business. This may work if one is really single-minded in the pursuit of
a business. But the work may drain a person and make them lose sight of
the goal. Business thus becomes some dream rather than a means to
achieving another dream (i.e. a financially secure life to be spent with loved
ones). Thus, business becomes their end rather the means to achieve their dreams.
Unfortunately, one cannot get all the experience one needs to achieve his
‘dreams’ (whatever they may be) through a job alone for a job teaches one to be
an employee not as an entrepreneur. They were to be ordinary not to become
extraordinary but little do they know that being ordinary is not normal. In
short their mindset is just to survive not to excel.
The old plan was made for the
industrial age, today is the industrial age. The dynamics of livelihood
are definitely changing so following the old plan is not going to give one an
edge in business. So one will have to come up with another plan to avoid
getting trapped in such a rat race. Unfortunately, there is no ‘new plan’
although the elements are just beginning to come together. Many business
people, Donald Trump and Robert Kiyosaki are two of them, advocate that people
will definitely have to start using their heads more often, hard work is often
not going to be enough. Paul Zane Pilzer, former economics adviser to
Bill Clinton, would also say that business is moving away from just providing
gods and services to providing information to consumers. So the time will
really be demanding more. The edge we seek is not going to be give to us
by our schools alone, aspiring businesspeople will definitely have to learn to
study their surrounding to look for new techniques and opportunities.
Why Planning?
The relationship between
planning and action has been succinctly phrased in the following lines by a
highly successful Thai businessman, John Iamramond:
When you have a vision, you
can make a positive decision.
When you have no vision, you
have confusion.
When you have vision but no
action, you have an illusion.
Needless to say, planning
ahead is that important for only after one makes a plan, can the action follow.
The lack of planning ahead (a symptom perhaps of our indolence and
fatalism) can be found as the cause of Filipino’s hardships and lack of
progress. This lack of planning ahead results in Filipinos depending on
get-rich-quick schemes like Ponzi scams, noontime game shows, the lottery and
gambling. This affects our integrity as a person. This lack has also
resulted in the Philippine Diaspora or in the mentality of taking a certain
college course simply because it is a surefire way of finding a job.
Lack of a plan causes people
not to take responsibility for their action and would rather blame others for
their condition. People expect a government that would take care of them,
they expect to work for a company that would take care of them when they grow
old. When this does not happen they take to blaming the government, their
boss, their teachers, etc. for their situation.
Robert Kiyosaki tells people
that getting rich and successful does not happen overnight. It takes
years to leans the tricks of the trade and the mindset of the successful.
This will allow one to search for and to spot opportunities easily.
Sad to say, most Filipinos because they are afraid of being different
from their peers, choose not to invest the time and effort to learn how to be
successful. They would rather be like the people (non-planning people to
be exact) around them. Most of the Filipinos have crab mentality therefore they
pull each other down to their failures. They blame others not realizing that
they are the ones to blame.
In the Philippines , there is
no shortage of people who work hard. Hard work, as the authors see it, is
not a virtue, it is a symptom of a vice. “Hard work” has been defined as
“the sum of all the easy things you should have done but did not.” Hard
work thus deserves to be differentiated from the virtue of industriousness.
Hard work is rather the result of a lack of planning ahead and delayed
action. One always sees people studying hard on the day of an exam when
they could have avoided this toil by studying days ahead of the exam.
Planning ahead and making
good of that plan is a duty for every Filipino. Not only will it help the
Philippine society, but more importantly, it will help you. You
are the most important person in this world.
How does this apply to
college students? For college students are immediately stereotyped as
spoiled brats. You just party everywhere every time you want not thinking of
how much we spend just to have temporary satisfaction. We just work
hard later and hope to have bright future. Is that true?
In my opinion, the student’s
ability to prioritize certain important activities leaves much to be desired. A
good curriculum and good teachers are useless if the student doesn’t act on it.
Students are like powerful bullets being fired out of a sniper rifle by a
cross-eyed marksman: lacking in direction and thus we are unable to use
our powers properly.
Definitely, studies should be
the most important priority on a students list. In our studies, one must
not neglect philosophy, history and ethics as it will serve as a foundation as
a human being. Some students just like to pass and not learning from this
subjects. Accounting, Marketing and etc, while important for the future
are not as important as the character formation we get from studying these
subjects so that we don’t take for granted what has been taught us.
Spiritual life should also
rank highly on the student’s list, perhaps more so than studies itself.
We should offer whatever we’re doing to our Highest Being because we can
find true meaning in Him and only through him can we discover what his ‘plan’
for us is.
Students should not depend on
school for all the education they need. Students should be open to other
opportunities for learning and experience that don’t necessarily have anything
to do with school. Whether one can find these ‘opportunities’ depends on
how much he has focused himself on his plan or vision.
So the most important thing
in business is have a good character and faith in God. Some students are
very dependent on their parents so they hinder their growth. Like John
Gokongwei, he does not have sufficient knowledge on how to run a business but
he has a vision to become successful. One reporter interviewed him asking why
he became successful. He answered: “Because I have nothing.” This means that he
know that he still has lot to learn. So he practiced the delayed gratification
which we often find lacking. Character is thus another thing to keep in
mind during the planning and implementation stage.
John
Gokongwei
A Few Caveats
Planning is necessary for
most endeavors. However, need this article sound too much of a pep-talk
or too one-sided, there are some words of caution. The first one is never
to forget the context. The second and related to the first is
flexibility.
By context, one refers to the
situation one finds himself in. One may have vision and put in very
careful planning but if it just will not work, try coming up with a better
plan. Study what has been done so far then try to look for mistakes.
A part of the context is
called motivation. Many organizations exert a lot of effort, time
and money in order to study what can make a person want to accomplish
something. Generally however, motivation is divided into two types:
A positive and a negative type of motivation. The former refers to
the case wherein a person wants to do something because he feels rewarded in
doing so, the latter case refers to when a person is motivated because he is
afraid of certain undesirable consequences (i.e. punishments). Whatever
the case, it is always better to be motivated as the authors know that in the
world of business, or any other endeavor for that matter, there is always going
to be attrition. With sufficient motivation, one is better able to avoid
this attrition (and it has been proven empirically) following the saying “If
there is a will there is a way” (It is even more graphic in Filipino: “Kung
gusto maraming paraan, kung ayaw, maraming dahilan”).
In the case of flexibility,
it simply refers to the ability to change the plan given the situation that presents
itself. It may also refer to the changing of priorities. It can
actually be seen as a balancing act: While the plan is to be followed, it
is not to be followed if it my compromise the goal. Perseverance is
important in achieving the goal, but there is a thin line between persistence
and stubbornness in method. Of course, I don’t want to elaborate
on this too much for being flexible is actually quite intuitive.
Conclusion
Planning ahead is very
important and as students, one should not waste their time on activities that
may not have a positive effect on your future. We all only have 24 hours
each day and yet some people are more successful than others. Why?
Because they know how to prioritize the things which will bring them accomplish
their plan as soon as possible. We could learn from these people.
Students must not allow their
peers to control their life. Being ‘like everyone else’ is not always
desirable. It takes a courageous person to break the norm and
become extraordinary.
So what should stop students
from having vision and from taking the action that can lead them to the vision?
It’s their mindset. Many people are just lazy or they have been
programmed to think that they ‘just can’t do it’ and are helpless.
Successful people will thus,
have what unsuccessful will not have because successful people will do what
unsuccessful people will not do. And that is to plan and to apply action
on that plan.
