By Donna Dunning
How do you combine adaptability and planning in your day-to-day life?
Planning helps you set goals and provides a focus for spending your resources, time, and energy. Without planning it is difficult to achieve the results you are looking for.
Adaptability allows you to deal with unexpected events and circumstances. Without adaptability, you may end up stuck on a path that no longer is taking you where you want to go.
Too much planning or too much adaptability can become a liability.
Over-planning can lead to tight deadlines and, when unforeseen delays or changes occur, pressure and anxiety. Being overly flexible can result in a lack of focus, which may interfere with getting important tasks accomplished.
Identify your Strengths and Challenges
Take a few seconds to reflect on how you tend to use planning and adaptability. Are you more likely to make plans (Usually associated with a personality preference for Judging) or go with the flow (Usually associated with a personality preference for Perceiving)?
Adaptability and planning can be affected by your natural approach as well as by the situation, your life experiences, learning, and confidence.
If you are naturally a planner, you may find it helpful to build room into your schedule for unexpected events. Reframe unexpected events as opportunities rather than interference.
If you are naturally adaptable, consider setting more concrete goals and timelines for yourself. Challenge yourself to focus on and complete one task before turning your attention to another one.
If you have a preference for Intuition, you may have a tendency to overestimate what you can accomplish and underestimate how long something will take. Keep making reality checks to improve your skills in this area.
Find the Flex
Flex your approach by making adaptable plans.
John Krumboltz, a well-known career theorist, coined the term “planned happenstance” to describe the role of plans and chance in our careers. Read more about this in my Are you Ready for the Unexpected post.
Think about how you can use both adaptability and planning to be effective at home, at work, or with friends.
Perhaps you have an example or story to share that shows how you have learned to effectively flex between adaptability and planning in your life.
For more information and ideas on this topic, there are several of my previous posts that discuss the distinctions between Judging and Perceiving as personality type preferences.
What’s your preference- Judging or Perceiving?
Connecting Personality Type to Communication J/P Differences
Working with your J/P preferences
If you are interested in reading about personality type interactions, see my Getting Along post.
Introduction to Type and Communication describes in detail how personality preferences influence communications.
If you live in the USA, Introduction to Type and Communication is now available on Kindle.
