Over the holidays, I will be having dinners with the family and friends that impact me. Every day for ten days I will be writing about something I have learned in the first two months of this project.This is lesson 5.

When I began this project, I had a plan of sorts. I was certain that having dinner with a different person each night would draw some curiousity about who I was actually meeting and what we were talking about.  I knew that I would go out each night, write every morning and try to spend my afternoons taking care of booking additional dinners.

I also thought that I might be able to support myself by selling advertising and I hoped that it would be easy to find people who would have dinner with me through the people that I already knew.  Early on I realized that I had not built the time in to run the project as a business and that I might have saved myself a lot of anxiety by setting up my schedule before I launched the project.

All that is easy to see in hindsight and I was probably even aware of it at the time. That of course brings me to the topic of time, which is of the essence for all of us. We simply do not seem to have enough of it or make enough of it.

As I began my interviews, I was amazed how many of the people I met were not big planners. They certainly had direction and passion, but none were living according to a five or ten year plan. As if to confirm this discovery, those who had once thought they had everything mapped out to go according to plan had without exception had that plan derailed by something beyond their control.

To a person, I heard about the opportunities that had defined people’s lives despite the fact that they were unexpected and could not have been planned for. The people I meet are of course incredibly well prepared to offer valuable skills. They work at knowing themselves and learning from everything they experience, the good and particularly the bad.

What I initially talked about as being responsive to circumstances as opposed to futilely trying to control for every possibility has come to look more and more like intention.  And while intention is important in determining what we do, it is even more important in determining how we do it.

I have learned about my own intentions in the first two months of this project. I am trying to show that there are generous people who are doing meaningful things for other people. I hope to learn how people make these contributions while taking care of themselves so that they can continue to be effective.

As the New Year approaches, intention is on many people’s minds. If only it would stay all year round. I for one will certainly be resolving to stick to my intentions and appreciate any help in doing so that you can offer.