Planned/Orgnaized Living vs being Spontaneous

My friend Vinay Dabholkar in his blog Becoming to Being, posted an interesting article on Story of Plan B. Like most of his posts, this too was thought provoking. My personal take on this specific one is that "it depends on the context" and I prefer preparation/planning to Plan B, though it might appear same, there is a subtle difference. When you are preparing, you come from a position of "playing to win". Plan B, though depends on the context, brings in a feeling of not being confident or in other words "playing not to loose".

I was reminded of an interesting discussion I had with a few friends of mine on being spontaneous vs being organized. Personally, I consider myself to be fairly organized. Lot of preparation and planning goes into most of my activities - both personal (like going on a vacation, or preparing for a job interview) and professional (meeting a client, commiting to a set of milestones etc.,). Naturally, I was arguing hard for being organized. Here are a few advantages that I see for "organized" people:

• the chance of succeeding is lot higher
• easier to change course midway because you are in control
• easier to accomplish several things and therefore lead a balanced life
• you become credible, because people would know that if you have committed to something it would happen
• ironically and more importantly, I've found out that I can be lot more spontaneous because I'm organized.

The key ofcourse is not being tied to outlook calendar or being totally inflexible or too much worried about "what people might think" if you change something. Its really not either-this-or-that.

I've no problem being spontaneous as long as being spontaneous is not an excuse for being indisciplined and not keeping commitments.