I have a love/hate relationship with 5 year plans.  It seems like some people are natural planners and look down on those who aren’t.  Other people think God (or fate or karma or whatever) have got this whole thing rigged, and if we’re more focused on the “right now” the future will take care of itself.

In reality, I think its both.

I think there are chapters of life where its really important to have a plan.  If you’re a guy and you’re about to ask a girl to marry you, you should probably have a plan.  If you’re leaving the company to start your own firm, you should probably have a plan.  If you’re a musician and you’re about to move to New York (or Nashville or LA or wherever), you should definitely have a plan (spoiler alert: there are only so many tables that need to be waited).

And then I think there are chapters of life where its more important to be present in the present.  If you’re only on your second date, just be on your second date.  Its probably going to take you more than 2 hours to figure out if you want to marry that guy or not.  If you’re a first year med school student, just focus on that first year of med school.  I bet sometimes the best way to figure out your specialty is to just keep showing up for class.

All that being said, I’ve been in more of a 5-year plan mode over the past couple of months.  Between starting grad school this fall and preparing to step back from some of my responsibilities at work, I’ve been thinking a lot about the future.  I have pages of notes.  I have tons of ideas floating around in my head.  Doors that are open.  Opportunities that exist.  Goals that I want to set.  Opportunity cost.  If I do this, I probably can’t do that.  Etc.  Sometimes all these thoughts and ideas are swirling around my head so much that the fog makes it hard to see.  Like a sunrise on a country road after a storm.

As I was driving down one of those roads this morning, the fog began to lift and light began to shine through the haze when I began to realize that all of those goals, all of those things that I want to accomplish, all of the things I want to do in life - it all comes down to this:

When my life is over, when I’m standing before God, I want him to look at me and say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

I’m still trying to digest all of the information I took in yesterday as I was listening to Warren Buffett speak.  That sheer amount of info was more than my brain can take in.  That being said, here are a few quick notes of things I jotted down or found interesting.

- “The state of business school education is pretty bad.  If I was designing a business school program, I would pretty much offer 2 classes.  One class on how to value a company and one on how markets work.”

- “No one has a bigger interest in our stock price than me.  I am in the process of giving all of my stock away, and the higher the stock price sells at, the more good I can do in the world.  I would rather send X number of vaccines to Africa than 80% of X.”  In other words, the higher the stock price, the more lives I can save.  Such an interesting way of looking at stock price the power of wealth generation.

- “Its much more enjoyable to learn from other people’s mistakes than to learn from your own mistakes.”   So I try to learn from other people’s mistakes as much as I can…

- “High corporate tax rates are not the reason economic growth and recovery are not happening as quickly as we’d like.  The truth is, there is a tremendous amount of money out in the system right now.  Its not getting held up in taxes.  Its getting held up in the tremendously high cost of providing health care in this country.”

Also, Bill Gates was there.

And I got to try on a $35,000 Patek Philippe.

Well… me and about 40,000 other people.

Thanks to the generosity of a family friend and shareholder, I was able to attend the Berkshire Hathaway shareholders convention in Omaha, NE this weekend.  For those of you who aren’t into the whole finance thing, Berkshire Hathaway is the holding company managed by Warren Buffett - the 3rd richest man in the world and arguably the most successful investor in the history of capitalism.  The annual shareholders convention is sort of the “Woodstock of Capitalism.”

Right now I’m sitting in a coffee shop in downtown Omaha completely floored by what I just experienced.  Never in my life have I seen someone so knowledgeable in so many different areas.  At several points in the day I had a hard time keeping up.  I spent most of the day baffled at how so much information could exist inside of one person’s brain.

Here’s basically how it all went down:

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I went and saw the (apparently controversial?) documentary “Bully” yesterday.  I had a handful of folks on Facebook and Twitter ask me about it, so here are my thoughts.

This isn’t a review.  If that’s what you’re looking for, this article from the New York Times will do a much better job.

First off, it’s not the most well-made documentary I’ve ever seen.  From a purely cinematic standpoint, it’s good - but it’s not great.  There are a lot of things I wish the filmmakers would have done differently.  The storyline jumps around a lot.  And not necessarily in a good way.  There are some subplots that are introduced and then completely abandoned.  The good thing about this is that it helps to communicate the realization that bullying is a much more complex and far-reaching social topic than anyone realizes.  Unfortunately, the storytelling suffers because of this.

One of the other things I wish the filmmakers had done differently was in choosing their subjects.  On the news and in the headlines, we hear that bullying is a nationwide problem affecting students in all areas and all walks of life.  However, all of this film’s subjects came from similar rural, isolated, lower to lower-middle class areas.  I work with mostly middle/upper-middle class students in the suburbs of a pretty large city.  I was left wondering just how relevant, if at all, this film is to their school experience.  (Maybe a couple of you guys can chime in on the comments section???)

That being said, the subject of the film (bullying in the public school system) is so compelling that despite the less-than-stellar storytelling, its still an interesting film.  At times, it is still gripping.  It is still emotional.  And not in a manipulative way.

If you work with students, the school system, or have children of your own - I think it might be worth checking out.

Have any of you guys seen it?  What do you guys think?