Having a plan is important!

Lauren here!
In chess, it is important to have a plan! What do you want to accomplish in the position?
How do we do that?
You need to identify the strengths and the weaknesses. There are weak and strong squares. There are also
your pieces too.
You can transfer your chess planning skills to other areas in life.

Here's a great example about planning ahead. Yesterday, my friend and her friend and I took a day trip to Seattle and it required planning skills.
But we needed to figure out the specific details. How did we get there? There were two options: a bus and a car. We took a bus.
If you choose to take a bus, you have to figure out what bus routes to take. Plan ahead! We did research on the computer
to figure out the bus route to Seattle.
In chess, you might think, "Oh, I'll launch an attack and deliver checkmate." But you need specific moves to do this, such as
doubling up your rooks on the 'g' file, and moving the 'h' pawn up and etc.

But this leads us to another couple questions: Where did we want to get off in Seattle? What did we want to do once we get in the city? We could take a walk, take a ferry, go to the Space Needle, etc. Once we figured out what we wanted to do, we had to learn what street it was on in Seattle, so we can know what bus stop to get off at. How much does the bus cost? What time would we get to Seattle?
Once we did more research on the computer we had the entire day planned out. In chess, it is very important to be flexible too. It is also important to be prepared. It rains a lot in Seattle, so we came prepared with our raincoats. We had to be flexible in Seattle. For lunch, the cafe ran out of wraps and we really wanted one. We said, "No big deal, just find another place to eat." And that's what we did. In chess, you might find yourself that you need to switch plans. If you wanted to open the 'g' file, but your oppenent locked the pawns on the file, then you need to alter your original plan (maybe try to open another file, etc). See no big deal!

Hope you can learn from this.