me to think of each day as the first day of the rest of my life.
I’ve learnt from Adrian that everything important in life requires a plan. I’m not sure how I got through the first twenty-six years of my life without one, but I’ve made up for lost time. I suppose it’s only natural that I’m not yet on Adrian’s level, I’m coming from a low base. Whenever I have doubts, the red bikini spurs me on.
‘Prior planning and preparation prevents piss-poor performance,’ Adrian says.
He can be funny sometimes.
It seems weird to admit this, but I’m not sure what Adrian does for a living. He explained it to me, but I couldn’t grasp it. And now it is way, way too late to ask him again.
As far as I can work out he is a free-ranging man of influence – a gun for hire. He told me once he uses his outstanding project management skills to advance his clients’ goals. Last month he was responsible for getting the Mayor of Sydney re-elected, but he has moved on. He mentioned something about federal politics. Whatever it is he does, he is good at it.
On my laptop I open the Project Adrian Plan (never to be referred to as PAP). Six months ago I entered a line item: Engagement. I left it a little open. Any time between December and February would have been fine. But I’m ready to increase the certainty on that now. I delete Dec–Feb and put in a new target date: Tonight. It is time to ascend the Cone of Certainty. Imagine, I could have gone my whole life without hearing of The Cone if it wasn’t for Adrian. Oh, to reach the perfection of the point. Oh, to reach it with Adrian. Tonight. Tonight I will ascend. Using my drawing tool, I make a little picture …
Cone of Certainty
Then, as I often do on the train, I start a new email.
To: Marley Lennon Wright
From: Summer Dawn Rain Wright
Subject: My first encounter with taskeddling
It was funny how I hadn’t liked Adrian at first, Marley. I had woken, two hours into the flight, bleary and fractious, and pulled myself upright.
My hair was a tangled, snaky mess. Next to me Adrian had his computer turned on. With nothing better to do, my eyes were drawn to it.
A colourful bar chart filled the screen. Each bar had writing next to it, but I couldn’t read it from where I sat.
He looked up. I was struck by how indecently healthy he was. The whites of his eyes seemed freshly bleached, his cheeks had a slight blush of pink, his brown hair was lustrous, thick and neatly cut. He was like a horse spruced up for a show. A handsome and well-toned horse. ‘Where would we be without Gantt, huh?’ he said.
I sighed. I wasn’t feeling good. The drugs and alcohol had drained out of my system and I wasn’t too sure if he was speaking English. I felt a pang of loss for Owl. He would have known better than to talk to me this morning. He would have known exactly what I needed. And he wouldn’t have looked so dauntingly energetic while he was about it either. ‘Gant?’ I murmured in a discouraging way.
‘Henry Gantt, the father of project planning.’ Adrian’s eyes lit up. ‘Gantt revolutionised project management.’ He could have been spruiking a new deodorant – stay fresher longer, no white marks … ‘A project without a project plan is like’ – he paused – ‘travelling to a strange land without a map, a guidebook or an itinerary.’
‘Oh.’ That confirmed it – I was seated next to an alien. I’d never met anyone who planned things before, especially travel.
My friends all listened to their inner voices and went with the flow. They thought the universe would provide and all we ever have is now. The people I knew didn’t have itineraries. We shunned guidebooks in search of real experiences, often ending up in out of the way places without any evident attractions. ‘So much better’, we said to each other. ‘No tourists’. Except for us, obviously.
Adrian was still talking about the contributions Gantt had made to scientific management through ‘taskeddling’ (it was some weeks before I realised he was saying ‘task scheduling’). Adrian, it was clear, worshipped Gantt, whoever he was. If Gantt did a world tour, I bet Adrian would camp out to get tickets.
‘Project management,’ Adrian said, ‘is the art of ascending the cone of certainty.’
He seemed to think I was captivated. As a matter of fact I was, but not in the way he thought. It was an insight into a strange culture, like watching a reality TV show. And it was distracting me from my existential crisis.
‘When you start a project, there is so much you don’t know.’ He held his hands out wide. ‘And then, as you work your way in’ – he brought his fingers to a point – ‘you have it – perfect certainty.’
Perfect certainty. As he said that, the sun poked through the clouds outside the plane. A ray of light came through the little window and illuminated him.
Adrian’s fingers were still steepled together. Almost like he was praying.
‘What do you call that point?’ I gestured at his fingers.
His teeth flashed in the sun. ‘The Point of Complete Certainty.’
I felt it then, Marley – a shiver of possibility. Could this man have something I needed?
Adrian says if you take care of the little things, the big ones will take care of themselves. Turns out I’d been tackling things the wrong way around my whole life.
Clicking on the email, I press ‘send’.
I stretch as I look out the train window, remembering the first time I heard of The Point of Complete Certainty. What bliss, to know exactly where you were going, exactly what you were doing. I never would have conceived of such a possibility without Adrian.
Adrian and I are incredibly compatible. We have discussed our life goals – two children, a house on the North Shore, private schooling. Preferably we will have a girl and a boy. There are ways of choosing gender I believe, something to do with yoghurt.
Oops. I glance at my watch. My daydreaming has put me a little behind schedule with my social media, but that’s alright. Social media is not a critical event. I can reduce it to fifteen minutes. Opening Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram, I carefully work through my contacts. One third encourage, one third respond, one third communicate. Building a social media platform is critical to success in the entertainment industry. Not that I could be said to be in the entertainment industry as such. Not yet. But I have ambitions.
Dramatic music fills my head as it always does when I ruminate about my career aspirations. The correct musical accompaniment is important to set the scene. The music stops abruptly as I remember I haven’t told Adrian about my secret goal.
Adrian used his extensive influence to get me an entry-level position at a TV station. He thinks I will use my new-found management talents in production. ‘Project management skills will get you a long way in television,’ Adrian says. One day I will have to tell him I have no intention of moving into management. And I will tell him soon – just not yet. I’m waiting for the right time.
At
