Scavenging and planning

Life is better with a plan.  It gives us a channel for creation, a sense of purpose, a focus.  But equally, we all need scavenging skills.

WHAT ARE SCAVENGING AND PLANNING?

Scavenging is the art of taking the easy opportunities life presents.  Scavenging animals tend to feed off the prey of predators, without being predators themselves.  Human scavengers comb the landscape, recovering other people’s waste, and making use of it.  Scavenging is an energy-saving strategy.  We don’t have to create an original creation – we harvest spares from other people’s work.

Planning, in contrast, is the art of making new opportunities no one has thought of, and seeing them through. Planners tend to see ahead, believing that something should be done now to create resources for later. Planners map out the landscape, and form operations based on that map. The future can be created by us, if we are prepared to see far enough ahead.

Planning is what makes someone be able to retire on a reasonable pension – it involves seeing ahead, and putting aside some resources each day for the future. Scavenging is what enables someone on a low pension to live OK – it involves finding out the easiest and cheapest sources of present supply.

SCAVENGING AND PLANNING IN ACTION

These two types of strategy invade all we do.

In relationships, the planners are looking ahead, selecting and assessing their dates based on future priorities. Meanwhile, scavengers are collecting partners left, right and centre, scooping easy pickings from the dating world, whether or not they are good long term strategic prospects.

In dieting, the planners are eating for the body and health they want for years to come. Meanwhile, scavengers are grabbing what is around them, making use of what is easily available.

WHICH STRATEGY IS RIGHT?

We need both attitudes. If we are all-planner, then we may let today go by without smelling the roses, or taking time to meet the people under our noses, because we are too busy thinking about the future. But if we are all scavenger, then we may be so busy smelling the roses, and choosing easy short-term answers, that we fail to store up resources for the future.

BEING ADAPTABLE

Are you a planning or scavenging personality? Both are perfectly valid, but we may wish to adapt where we notice that we are too much one or the other type.

Advantages of a planning mentality:

• Long-term security
• A protected life
• Better health
• Fewer emergencies
• Lower risk

Advantages of a scavenging mentality:

• Short-term flexibility
• The ability to adapt quickly
• The ability to spot a bargain
• The ability to live in and enjoy the present
• A lower-cost lifestyle

A final observation: couples are often a pairing between a planner and a scavenger. The planner takes on the worry about the future, and the scavenger focuses on enjoying the present. The scavenger can often be the motivation behind the holiday that is only possible because the planner has saved for it. The planner makes the bedroom tidy, and the scavenger makes the bedroom fun.

Fortune and misfortune can happen to anybody. The difference is that planners are willing to sacrifice present comfort in the interests of future certainty, and scavengers are willing to sacrifice future certainty for present comfort.