The Power of a Plan
Late in my college career I suddenly found the motivation to make a plan for myself. That changed the way I lived my life and gave me a clear purpose and direction to follow. I share this story as an example of how a plan can have the same effect in your life.
A Ship Without a Rudder
For the majority of my college career, I went from year to year without a real plan. I was studying to be a mechanical engineer but I had no idea what I wanted to do with that education. I floated from class to class with vague aspirations of working on cool and exciting products and technologies when I graduated. I was lucky enough to get an internship early on that led to good work experiences. I built up a solid resume of internship and research experience but it was unfocused and lacked direction. None of the companies I worked at drew me in as a place that could become a career or a passion for me.
That changed when I attended a guest college lecture by an alumni from my university. He talked about product development at the companies he had worked at like Segway and Intuitive. Not only was I immediately reminded of my original motivation for becoming a mechanical engineer in the first place—inventing new and exciting things—but I was blown away by the technology and application of robotics in the surgical theater. It felt like something straight out of science fiction—surgeons using robotics to treat and heal patients. But it was here and now and making a difference in the world.
All of the sudden I realized that I had been floating out in an ocean of opportunity with no direction. I was a ship without a rudder, trying to go somewhere but not getting anywhere because I had no idea where I wanted to go, much less how to get there.
A Turning Point
That moment was a turning point for me. I knew I needed to make a change if I was going to work at a place like Intuitive. I never physically wrote or typed out a plan for how I would there, but all of the sudden I had singular purpose. I had a clear direction in my mind that guided my decisions in the next few years. I knew I needed to take classes and find work experience that would make me well suited for product development at a surgical robotics company.
From that point I tailored my class schedule and the research projects that I volunteered for to meet that goal. I turned down a full-time job offer that was just shy of six figures in Texas where I could have bought a house at 24 years old and instead studied for the GRE so I could get a masters and focus on engineering design. I knew it was unlikely that I would get hired for a position straight out of my undergraduate program so I pursued the added experience and technical skillset that a master’s degree would give me.
Preparation Meets Opportunity
I cannot deny that what happened next was incredibly fortuitous. An R&D group contracted my university research group to do design and development work for them. I happened to be in the place where I could participate in research for the company I wanted to work for. However, I had to gamble and decide where to go to grad school before the contract was in place. At the time I made my decision, I thought I had about a 50% change of the contract being signed but there was no guarantee. I had been accepted to better schools with higher ranked programs and the version of myself from just a few years before would have struggled with the decision.
With my plan in mind, I decided to stay where I was and hope for the best. In this case, my best case scenario very nearly played out. The contract between Intuitive and the Compliant Mechanisms Research Group was finalized and I conducted research as a part of that contract for almost two years. Six months before I graduated I spoke with the head of the team funding my research and he let me know he had a position open for me to take when I finished school! It seemed that all the stars had aligned. However, at this point, it seemed my luck had run out.
Just two weeks later, the company hit a financial speedbump and stopped hiring entirely. Suddenly the position I had been working towards for three years vanished completely. I was determined not to give up, so I adjusted my plan and started looking for other high quality jobs in the area. At this point, I had acquired enough Career Capital to be a marketable candidate for entry level jobs. I interviewed for a number of companies in Silicon Valley and ended up with several job offers. I was honest with my manager at Intuitive and told him that while I really wanted to work for him, I had to take one of these offers if he still had no place for me.
He didn’t have a spot for me but he had asked around and someone had left a team in another group and they had a backfill position open. I flew out to California and spent an entire day in interviews with a team I had never met despite spending two summers and almost nine months in person at the company. A few weeks later, I had signed an offer to join the team full time after graduation.
“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity”
You may think that all of this was luck. But you’ll find many instances of this kind of luck in almost everyone’s career path. As Seneca put it “luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” All the luck in the world would not have landed me that job unless I had made the plan and put in the preparation first. Your planning will turn your opportunities into your own luck!
The Value of a Plan
Regardless of what happened with that research contract, by deciding on a path I wanted to take, I gave every day of my life direction and purpose. I was lucky to find a path to a company that I respected and admired. But if that contract had been made with another research group across the country, I would still have had a much stronger resume for engineering design and robot hardware development. There are other innovative companies working on robotics, healthcare, and similar applications that would have had fulfilling roles for me to play. But I never would have made it to any of them without a plan to guide my efforts.
The Trajectory vs the Destination
You’ve heard the phrase if you shoot for the moon, you’ll land in the stars. You’ve got yourself a rocket and you know where you want to go. The goal is the moon, the plan is the trajectory of your rocket. It’s ok if you stray from your plan to some degree. Your calculus may have been a little off, but you’re much closer to your intended destination and from there you can course correct, make a new plan and shoot for the moon again—or perhaps an even loftier goal. If you follow this path long enough you’ll converge on your goal sooner than you think. In many ways, you are following the three step iterative path of designing, building, and testing your own life.
Along the way, you may find that the goal you sought out and reached in the end is different then the one you aimed for at the beginning. Don’t worry! Plans are allowed to change. It’s more important that you end up in the right place than it is that you start out aiming for it in the first place. As Stephen Covey put it, you would never want to “work harder and harder at climbing the ladder of success only to discover it’s leaning against the wrong wall.” (Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People)
Your Plan
What plans have you made in your life that got you closer to where you wanted to be? What worked and what didn’t?
