Without a Pre-Plan Checklist you may be Sunk

I learned a very good lesson this past weekend. I learned how important it is to always conduct your “Pre-Plan Checklist”. The purpose of a checklist is to make sure you cover all the imperative steps upfront in order to get to your destination or intended result safely, timely, accurately, with the least amount of setbacks or delays due to conditions that you have control over.

Now I bet you are dying to hear what events brought us to this little talk on pre-plan checklists. We all know that at Soulspring we are all about learning from one another so I’m not at all embarrassed to share this story of mishap with you because I know it will be very educational, and maybe a little entertaining, to many women.

Like I alluded to earlier, my story begins with 3 women, a boat, a busy boat launch and you guessed it, no pre-sail checklist. We pulled into the parking lot of the boat launch and saw trucks and boats parked every which way. We maneuvered off to one side in order to be out of the flow of traffic. As we passed what appeared to be the waiting line, my friend kindly waved at one of the gentleman waiting in line and said, “I guess were behind you?” He was a friendly guy and quickly responded, “Feel free to sneak in ahead of me.” It was like when you are the grocery store and someone with an over flowing cart gestures to you to go ahead because you only have a gallon of milk. But, it didn’t quite make sense in this instance because we all had the same number of boats on our trailers. Not objecting, we quickly made our way toward the launch site.

Everything was going smoothly…. Boat was in the water, the motor was running, we boarded and was just about ready to pull away from the dock when we noticed the boat was taking on water. Stunned we looked at each other and almost simultaneously said, “THE PLUG!” A friendly voice from the end of the dock, obviously talking from experience, instructed that we’d have to reverse our procedure and take the boat back out in order to the drain the water and fit the plug snuggly in the hole. Now picture this, lines of boats ready to go in the water, lines of boats ready to come out of the water, boaters and families antsy to get on with their day on the water, and we were standing in their way. Some folks looked obviously put out, but others shared some comforting words. “We’ve all done it!” “You’ll only forget this once.” And, “Thanks for the reminder!” were just some of the comments.

After a little rocky start my story ends with a spectacular day spent with great friends and a boat that stayed afloat. Completing a checklist is a vital step in any plan, be it a pre-flight, a pre-win, a pre-conquer, a pre-achieve . . . and especially the one I learned first hand, a pre-sail.

PLAN? CHECK!

Jenny,
Sister of Soul

Soul-spiration of the Week:
“Developing the plan is actually laying out the sequence of events that have to occur for you to achieve your goal.” ~George L. Morrisey