The act of making and keeping an appointment is an effort to change one’s thinking (“now, you must think about this”) but such changes can be harder to pull off if they come at the wrong moment.
A more effective appointment system might be one that unfolds over a series of appointments, gradually preparing the mind for a necessary change rather than expecting it to make a hard turn.
While self-knowledge can certainly help in making more thoughtful routines for one’s mental efforts, there are likely to be basic rules that could be applied to improve this flow – and not just for one’s self but also for groups.
Thus, not only might there be optimal times to schedule specific types of meetings, there may also be optimal sequences for meetings – patterns, rhythms.
While organizations are likely to gradually find the right time for their own group thinking, that evolution could be facilitated (or accelerated) using insights on how to best condition the mind for different kinds of work.
A more perfect plan
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often askew,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!
– from To a Mouse, by Robert Burns
At the core of every appointment is a gaping hole: the unknowable future. Believing that the future will resemble the present is dangerous folly.
Because we can neither see into the future, nor fully control the workings of any system, no matter how closed, all plans are inherently lacking. The implications and/or consequences of these gaps will vary depending on the reasoning behind the plan rather than its details.
An intricately detailed plan that is ill-thought-out is more to likely to fail catastrophically. A plan drawn up in broad strokes but based on a well-thought-out logic will probably fail in a less dramatic fashion. What then is the best logic for planning?
The best logic is simply that which seeks to improve itself. The most successful planning methods require feedback, anticipate change and invite evaluation. Skepticism, not just of present conditions but also of past assumptions, is the utmost conservative gesture.
The thoughtless execution of a thoughtful plan can be its own undoing.