Possibilities...

Planning stuff is one thing I pride myself at doing (at the cost of being immodest!). I put a lot of effort into most of my plans; meticulous calculations of how I will set about to achieve something. Although, I don't think I'm a very good executor of these fabulous plans, that could even put the Planning Commission to shame (I was only exaggerating. Was I??). Now the execution style is something I am still working on. The reasons for my slackness at carrying out my plans to conclusion could be simply laziness or the laissez-faire attitude that sometimes takes over our psyches (because I've bloody spent all my creative energy in making this awesome plan that I have no energy left to lift even a finger!!).

What I've realised about all this planning is that it's got a lot to do with possibilities of certain events happening, that stand out at indicators or peg-marks of certain progress toward the ultimate goal of the plan. Possibility is simply a probability of something happening, mostly incalculable or very difficult to simply calculate and put a number down to.

For example, to plan a regular work day of mine: I'd first group my activities and "before work", "work" and "after work". Before work could comprise, mostly, the mundane and necessary activities that I need to undertake to fulfill the requirements of a hygienic social being. Really there's not a lot of planning that goes in there! One simply has to be spontaneous with these things. The only real goal here is getting into office on time! So everything else you do before that doesn't really matter; just see that you get past those glass doors on the dot! Although a lot of the activities that precede the goal are necessary (like changing from night clothes to office attire), one fails to see the possibility of these "little things" not happening before getting to office - the final goal. It simply has to happen! But when it comes to planning "work" activities, there's a lot of scheduling, making appointments, so as to be able to make use of those 8 hours most efficiently (lest one remains behind to languish through the rest of his/her evening in those dreary mounds of reports and computers. Eeeeek!!!). So when I plan work stuff, a lot of it has got to do with other colleagues doing what they are supposed to do by the deadlines agreed upon. But alas!

So, one has to be enterprising enough to reschedule your set of tasks and plan your day all over again to suit the existing situation. Now to get back to the main theme of this blog post (apologies for my digressive writing!) - POSSIBILITIES. Each thing I do will be possible if some other set of events happen. Now these other events may or may not be in my control. So if I need to submit a report by 14.00 hrs, the possibility of that happening would be something like this:
Probability (report getting submitted on time) = P(report existing in some shape) x P(any inputs that were sought from colleagues are received) x P(any errors that had to be corrected are rectified) x P(other beneficial externalities that would expedite this completion of the report).
That last term really took out all the fun in this!

Anyways... I could also recalculate this as:
P(report getting submitted) = 1 - P(report not getting submitted on time) = 1 - {P(report not existing in any form till I thought of it) + P(any inputs that were sought from colleagues were simply denied me) + P(the report is full of errors and will take a day to proof-read) + P(the usual externalities, i.e. "if something has to go wrong, it simply will")}.
Doesn't this look more easier to calculate?!! How satisfying it would be to a mathematician since his/her the values of each of the smaller probabilities that comprise the "BIG" one in question are either 50% (equal likelihood of Yes or No) or 100% certainty.

Someone once managed to bash it past my intellect (with the 'subtle' powers of domineering argumentation) that the only thing certain (100%) is uncertainty itself! So that would make the last term in the second form of the equation, i.e. P(the usual externalities....) = 100%. Oh no! The probability of the report getting submitted on time is already tending to be "certainly not certain".

And yet, I go about planning. Oh! the possibilities in life :) And I would like to think I have my life all planned out. The possibility of planning a day so well that it actually gets done the way you wanted it to although unlikely, is very much possible. How can I say so after arguing to the contrary in the previous paras?

For this, I assume that all the events in the universe (every possible occurrence of any damn thing!) are mutually not exclusive of the other. That means, everything affects its surroundings. It's not a preposterous assumption if we consider Einstein's Theory of Relativity, the Central Limit Theorem and the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics (Ummm... I think it sounds more like a conspiracy of the laws of nature!!! Eeeek). Anyway, so all events interact with other events by either depending on their occurrence/non-occurrence. As such, their probabilities would not be 0.5 any more! They'd all be products of several million-billion probabilities that affect them. Since sum of all these million billion probabilities has to be unity (1), I'm guessing that each of these events would have very minute values (of the order of 10^million-billion something...). Taking a product of these tiny probabilities would give us a tinier value ----> final product almost equal to zero. So the expression on the right-hand-side of our probability equation would be 1 - (...almost zero) ~ 1. Looking better now!!!! :) So there's hope for all you planning-control freaks out there! Enjoy yourselves.