Hello and welcome to Best Laid Plans.

This is Sarah Hart Unger and this is a podcast where we talk all things planning and planning adjacent.

Now, this is not the first episode of the year that is airing, but I admit

this is the first episode that I am recording after the start of 2022. So hello from the other side

of the calendar and my new planners, of course. I am going to start with a little pep talk.

Yes, things are a little, you know,

unpredictable right now. We have Omicron spreading. We have a lot of COVID in a lot of locations.

Definitely a lot where I am. I've heard some people talk about this year like, it's ruined already.

It's going to be another 2020 or, you know, how can I plan anything when there's still so much uncertainty? But I do still

think we are in a very different place than we were early in the pandemic in that we know a lot more

about what to expect. We know what things are safe to plan. For example,

you can plan to write in your journal or in most places go for walks. You may not be able to plan

to hold a giant party and you may not be able to plan an international vacation, but it doesn't

mean that you're necessarily paralyzed

when it comes to planning. It just means you have to be a little bit more flexible about certain

types of plans and maybe embrace other plans that are more, as I've said previously, pandemic

proof, like reading books, you know, those are not going anywhere, or meditating or exercising.

Many forms of exercise can be done safely no matter what's going on from a infectious

disease perspective.

So I guess I just want to say, try not to think of 2022 as tainted already or, you know,

another year that's going to be a failure because I think there were a lot of

wonderful things about 2021 and how we managed to adapt to the new challenges. And I think

...