good to be here glad to be here for this
historic moment so I’m gonna talk about
why planning is overrated and I’ve been
getting some weird looks from that topic
but I have a good reason behind it a few
years ago actually I take that back
almost two decades ago I was looking at
three to five years in prison in a
chance situation that went terribly
terribly wrong now I promise
I am NOT a thug but up into that point
my responsible self was a non-smoking
non drinking no drugs doing community
devoted graduate of the University of
Delaware and I also went to Dell state
Conwell hall just so you know all right
but I worked at a major bank making what
I thought at the time was major bank and
if you look on the screen you can you
can see how happy I was working at that
bank but the other side of me the dreamy
side of me was a struggling journalist
and on-air personality looking seeking
to carve out a significant space in
hip-hop culture so my days at the bank
I planned secretly planned they didn’t
even know about it but I was planning I
was planning to move from my safe space
in Delaware to New York City the
epicenter of my day dreamy world I also
was aspiring to start my own magazine
because I was finding some difficulty
getting into the circle at that time it
was extremely hard to write for those
magazines in the
t-90s so I planned I planned I planned I
planned and I planned some more
matter-of-fact ice at my mother down I
looked deep within her beautiful
beautiful brown eyes and I said mom my
mom’s right there by the way I said mom
I didn’t ask I told her this this is the
plan
nothing’s gonna stop the plan nobody can
defer the plan and the plan shall be
executed and guess what three years
later I was still sitting at a desk at a
bank in Newark Delaware planning now all
of that changed one fateful night now
I’m not proud of this but somebody got
hurt while me and my frat brothers rout
excuse me my frat brothers and I my
mom’s a teacher while we were out and
again I want to restate that I’m not
proud of this but I realized very
quickly that everything that I had
plotted and planned up into that point
was now out the window I was charged
with a crime and could have done what I
consider a significant amount of time in
prison when the dust settled I played
paid a lot of fees lawyer fees and was
in and out of court and at that point
everything had changed so before I
continue with my story I’d like to ask
everybody in here who’s a good planner
who considers a show of hands who’s a
good planner okay who’s who’s a poor
planner okay who likes to let someone
else do the planning yeah all right well
I love a good planner I adore them in
fact especially on vacations and dates
just keeping it real but one of my
childhood heroes
Hannibal from the a-team back in the 80s
he used to say the phrase exactly I love
it when a plan comes together and
growing up that phrase meant everything
to me
why because Hannibal led a group of
fictitious mercenaries named 18 to
victory every television hour in the
1980s and they didn’t even like each
other I mean you had face man mr. t ba
Baracus sorry and I never quite fully
understood it but they all followed the
plan and it came together so now what is
planning planning is the process of
thinking about and organizing the
activities required to achieve a desired
goal now that’s the Wikipedia definition
so if you go looking for it it might
change but for the purpose of this talk
it fits so let’s go a little further
planning gets you and others on the same
page if you’re going in the wrong
direction on the right path it also
establishes priorities know priorities
plan it also communicates a message to
you and others and last but not least it
offers proper strategy in life and
career now when we go through life as
kids we grow up we say we’re going to be
this or we’re gonna be that we’re gonna
go to school for this many years make
this amount of money maybe get married
have 2.5 kids maybe get a nice big old
house and put a huge white picket fence
around it but the problem is is life
doesn’t always work like that sometimes
we fail sometimes you drop out of school
our kids may come early we make we may
get fired
sometimes the Housing Association won’t
even allow you to build a white picket
fence
around your own house right so one of my
heroes on you know boxing heroes at
least Mike Tyson famously stated does
anybody know exactly everybody has a
even Iron Mike had a plan until he got
punched in the mouth by Buster Douglas a
d-list fighter who gave Iron Mike his
very first lost completely not in a plan
I was heartbroken
I’ll be honest Mike’s one of my
favorites fun fact I got divorced not in
the plan and I sat in the same seat in
the same courtroom as Iron Mike Tyson
when he got divorced from Robin Givens
when the judge told me that everything
was just a little bit better
true true story
now as I look back on my life I realized
a lot of what I was doing was over
planning and over planning has even
deeper implications than regular
planning over planning reduces your
ability to adapt and adapt quickly it
also is predicated on perfectionist
perfection rather I’m a perfectionist
and it’s a torturous torturous demeanor
sometimes it’s it really is over
planning is also a form of social
anxiety reserved for control freaks and
yeah it might be a little bit of a
control freak too now even going a step
beyond that there’s a disorder
associated with over planning and that’s
called obsessive compulsive personality
disorder and people who suffer from this
disorder are in a perpetual state of
planning
they are always planning always looking
for what’s to come and very rarely do
they live in the here and then now in
fact some say that they live in the
future now I’m not sure how that occurs
but I’m interested
now one of my other pop culture heroes
Apollo Creed was training rocky after a
devastating loss to clubber Lang aka mr.
ta ka ba Baracus from the a-team and
when rocky wanted to give up and train
for tomorrow Apollo told them there is
no tomorrow he screamed it there is no
tomorrow and quite frankly that has
always resonated with me as well now as
my world just completely exploded in
Delaware and yes I’m being a little
dramatic but it definitely felt like my
world exploded when I had to take flight
and I did but things quickly started to
happen for me in chaos first things
after all that drama I got a job almost
immediately after all of that I met an
individual shout-out to kuru Daniels who
gave me an opportunity immediately now
the job was a internship and I was a
little old for internships but I took it
and then that job led to me getting laid
off before the end of the year but you
know what I realized that I was on my
way so I got another job behind a
register but I was in a highly
trafficked area of New York City by this
time I had moved to Brooklyn and then I
got another job and then another job and
then I started to write for the very
magazines that I started that I wanted
to compete with him that I aspired to
compete with and then all hip hop comm
my company was moving and we started to
meet people we started to influence the
culture and we started to change the
face of communication and information
translation and then I saw that even
though these were baby steps and I
didn’t have a whole lot of money
I was actually moving forward and I
realized that my greatest failure
propelled me to what I could not plan
for
that was success and speaking of all
hip-hop calm shoutout to my business
partner grouchy Gregg Watkins
right here honestly we didn’t plan he
had a site I had a site and we put the
two sites together on one day we didn’t
think about it we just did it and almost
20 years later we’re continuing to
influence culture and dictate the way
our industry communicates and we’re very
proud of that we ignored a lot of what
we were taught
fail to plan plan to fail didn’t make
sense to me other quotes if you don’t
know exactly where you’re going how will
you know when you get there and the
other one the most confounding one is
always always have a plan but guess what
we were listening to hip-hop music and
hip-hop was saying something completely
different so when I was at the bank I
was putting inspirational quotes up to
make them happy and at night I was
listening to the ghetto boys I’m living
for it today but if tomorrow comes cool
but to me that meant I’m ready now and
I’m ready for what’s to come
and I was also listening to other
counterculture movements the Smashing
Pumpkins said one of the most profound
statements ever believed in the resolute
urgency of now and jay-z my favorite
mogul said put this thing in motion
ain’t no reminded me back let’s go
now when we spring into action things
happen astrocytes provide energy to our
neurons I don’t know what an astral site
is
I dunno I have a lot of them adrenaline
rushes through our bodies we spring into
action we feel alert we feel alive we
feel focused now one gentleman by the
name of Oliver Berkman he doesn’t
believe in planning at all
I’ve read up on him and I researched him
and he doesn’t believe in planning at
all
he says uncertainty is where things
happen it is where are the opportunities
for success for happiness for really
living are waiting now while I don’t
subscribe to not planning at all I feel
what he’s saying so be very clear I’m
not saying don’t plan I’m not saying
make bad decisions okay but I am saying
that I believe in passion over planning
okay we live in a world where
uncertainty is certainly where the
abnormal is normal remember this you can
have all the plans in the world but they
will not come to fruition if the
universe does not conspire concede and
agree with those plans thank you [Applause]