For the first time in my life, I was left dumb-stuck when it came to scheduling something. It was awful.

Here I was, slated to go on a trip to my hometown with my family, all planned and prepared for a long train journey after quite a gap. Only to discover a few hours before the slated travel, that somehow I forgot to book the onward tickets!

Now I am someone who generally plans well in advance and believes in ensuring as much predictability as possible. And specially when it comes to travel, I painstakingly plan each and every leg of the trip.

But this was something I had never faced. I was furious on myself. How could I do something like this. Why didn’t I discover it before. And dejected that something I prided myself on – scheduling and planning, had gone wrong.

In the minutes that followed, with limited time and lack of focus, I quickly scanned the availability of flights and booked the best possible option. I didn’t even think of checking the train availability at that point of time, which I later discovered was indeed an option.

We traveled well and got home safely. However, my mind was racing all throughout and during the quiet flight, in a sombre mood, as I reflected back on the day, I figured two things.

Firstly, I had never imagined that such a situation would occur and when it did happen, I got into a reactive mode and my brain functioning reduced significantly. Secondly, I had a comfort/past bias that train availability wasn’t an option and I couldn’t put my bias aside to take a fully informed decision.

In our lives, we tend to plan everything considering the best or normally possible scenarios. We believe bad things happen to others and not to us. In behaving with confidence, sometimes we become overconfident. We ignore the fact that we are humans and we could go wrong or situations around us could go wrong any time. And when something bad or undesirable happens, we come up against a wall, not knowing what to do. In hindsight, it is better to plan considering all scenarios and be prepared for any eventuality.

And, we all have biases, which sometimes prevent us from doing the right thing. Again in hindsight, we should train our minds to acknowledge and recognise these biases, so that they don’t cloud our judgements – whether with inanimate things or with people – and help us take better decisions.

Hopefully, I have learnt a couple of lessons that I will remember and take care to heed in days to come.