Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago. — Warren Buffett

Planning is the process of thinking ahead about all tasks that might need to be accomplished to achieve a final goal. The more we include the expected and the unexpected, the more realistic our plan will be. However, human nature tends to overlook certain tasks while focusing on others, leading to delays or failures to reach the desired destination.

During the contribution phase of the Outreachy internship program, I had to create a 13 weeks project plan for one of the open-source projects I contributed to. It was challenging to read a short project description and create a detailed plan with all of the required activities to finish that project. I spent lots of time thinking about different scenarios where things can go wrong to create a proposal with a solid timeline. Luckily, I was accepted as an intern to work on that project, and things were moving ahead of the plan. I felt accomplished as I managed to meet every week's due dates, exceeding all expectations, including my own!

However, as a human, I didn't consider a key element in my project plan! SICKNESS! During week 5 of my internship, I became very sick. I had most of the Covid-19 symptoms, including the worst muscle and body pain I've ever had. Sickness affected my ability to work on my project, and my mentors advised me to take some time off to relax. During that time, I had to take the Covid-19 test and quarantine at home till I receive my test results. At that point, I felt helpless and my solid plan seemed very weak! I didn't see this coming, especially if my test results came positive! What would I do?

Thankfully, my results came negative, and I started feeling better and able to work on my project. One of the reasons no tasks went overdue while being sick is my planning strategy. I considered several causes of delays in my plan and added some time to review my tasks as I progress. This approach helped me in keeping my tasks on track and fixing any issues before moving to the next milestones. However, I am convinced now that life happens in a way that is never in our plan! Perfect plans do not exist, and there will be something unexpected down the road. This is not a call to ignore planning; rather, it is an invite to try your best while still being flexible and open to any modifications.