Importance of Plan B

Being single minded and fully dedicated to achieve one sole objective is often overrated. I will just tell you why it didn’t work out in my life. This post is about the importance of having a plan B however confident you are about the Plan A. Let me begin by unusually citing the example of Titanic. We all know that it sank because of the imperfection in Plan B (I mean the insufficient life boats).

Till the middle of January this year I was too hopeful of getting into the premier institutions of India – the IITs. Only after looking at my result that I realized that I was ‘too’ hopeful. Without the ‘too’ it would have been a lot better because I wasn’t let ‘too’ behind. I was just 1 mark short of qualifying. Even that one mark would have landed me only in the fierce competition of the next level. So I was not heartbroken by the result. But the bad news was I had no other plans and I was virtually in a dead end.

For about 2 months I just had IITs in my mind working without a thought about what would I do if I couldn’t make it. That was a big blunder considering the impact it had in me even after the results were out. The impact was not of sorrow or guilt but of my irresponsibility of not having an alternative.

I am not the type of guy who would feel sad for not getting through an entrance exam but I felt the impact of it. I was not prepared for it. I mean I had not made plans that I could execute in such a situation. It took me more than months to figure out my next move. It was too late already when I came up with the next idea. And that idea didn’t work either! So it was all a devastating disaster.

The point I am trying to make here is simple. It doesn’t matter how confident you are as far as your sole Plan A is concerned but your efforts can never go without yielding fruits if you are intelligent enough to have a Plan B. A plan B can also act as a catalyst to your plan A because you will start acting fearlessly because you have a support line if you ever happen to trip.

Another not so obvious advantage of a plan B is that you can immediately take your mind of your plan A as soon as you come to know that it had failed even after your best efforts. You can just switch to your next project and pretend as if nothing had gone wrong in spite of the worst of the failures you faced. This could be helpful in keeping your mind full with something else that you care about. May be it is just a trick psychology to cheat your brain but it works.

Never underestimate the necessity of Plan B. It is very important to the success of Plan A and it also has some very good side effects such as keeping your confidence intact even after a failure if at all it happens(We all hope the opposite but it still happens).