We’re often told that we need a detailed plan for our future. Best to have a series of them, actually: an eighteen-month plan, a five-year plan, a ten-year plan, etc.

This is good advice. Without goals, we tend to drift. But it’s easy to take planning too far, to fall madly in love with a very specific version of the future.

There are three problems with this:

1. Sometimes, you change but the plan doesn’t. We’re always changing, a little bit every day. We can outgrow our plans without realizing it.
2. Sometimes, the world changes around your plan. There’s a lot we can’t control, and the world is changing rapidly. Who knows what the automobile industry will look like in a decade? Or, for goodness sakes, the newspaper industry?
3. A better opportunity might come along. If you’re obsessed with a single, perfect plan, you’re likely to miss other opportunities (even if they’re actually a better fit).

So plan, of course, but stay flexible.

If you do a job where someone tells you exactly what to do, he will find someone cheaper than you to do it. — Seth Godin, Stop Stealing Dreams

Seth Godin has written extensively about jobs that fit neatly in manuals, that require few judgment calls, leaps of faith, or human connection:

They’re in trouble.

The Academic Advising Manual

When I’m doing it right, my job (academic advising) won’t fit in a manual. It’s too messy.

Focus on helping others.

That’s it.

When you turn your focus outward, you realize that you have many things other people don’t have. You also realize that you’re more capable of helping than you think.

You don’t have to solve your own problems first — they’ll wait. And when you do solve them, there will be more. Thank goodness, too! Who wants to live a life with no problems? All sunshine makes a desert.

I’m a perfectionist. If you know me personally, this is probably not news to you.

I like things to be just so, and it’s hard for me to move on from any situation that’s not yet perfect.

Over the last couple years, though, I’ve gradually realized that across-the-board perfectionism has a steep price, one that I’d been paying unwittingly. But I think I’ve found a compromise, a way to embrace perfectionism while avoiding much of this cost.

I’m experimenting with a new post format: a simple list of things I’ve found useful lately. I hope you find it, well, useful!

Here’s a swingin’ YouTube clip, a classy (but affordable) pen, and a manifesto.

1. Trumpeter Snooky Young on The Tonight Show

Snooky Young (1919-2011) was a musician’s musician.

He wasn’t well-known among the general public, but jazzheads knew him to be among the best of the best. He enjoyed a 70-year career (!) as a lead trumpet player, including 25 years with The Tonight Show.