Leveraging Experience Based Search to Help Cancer Patients

“If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”

When Isaac Newton said this, he clearly showed his belief that we all benefit from the experiences of those who have gone before us. No matter how brilliant or driven we are, we can always make greater achievements and make them more quickly when we build on others experiences.

Now with MAP (Mission Adaptive Plan) you can stand on the shoulders of those who have completed a least a portion of your planned task and allow those who follow you to benefit from your experience.

When you are faced with a complex problem – whether it is as simple as a long road trip or as complex as a five-year battle against cancer – you must make preparations, plans, and discover resources. MAP gives you an easy method of breaking down these problems into simple steps that will ultimately lead you to your goal. You avoid the confusion, wasted time, and discouragement that often result from the huge number of options that are available to you.

MAP gives you the vision of hindsight with the timing of insight – you literally have the 20/20 vision that comes from hindsight, but you have it before you have completed your path.

Famed adventurers Lewis and Clark showed the importance and effectiveness of a MAP-like process.

They were among the first non-natives to make the transcontinental journey, but they gathered information from those who had made small portions of the trip. They also educated themselves in botany, zoology, and medicine – because they knew that those skills would be important. They studied the maps and journals of the traders and trappers who had already explored portions of their journey and, by the time they embarked on their expedition, they knew as much about the West as anyone in America.

Along the way, they saw that they needed translators to speak to the Native Americans who lived in the territory that they were traveling through. They recruited Sacagawea to serve as a go-between and mediator.

Even with all their planning, the expedition encountered obstacles and barriers that they had not anticipated. Yet, because they took meticulous notes and created detailed maps, the next group to make the journey did so much more easily.

The MAP process allows you to benefit from the explorers who have gone before you and to pass your knowledge along to others who are making similar journeys.

The process is best explained through an example –

Currently, Cancer.im (a social network for patients, advocates, and volunteers) is using MAP to provide a step-by-step guide for patients to follow from the point of diagnosis to being declared cancer free.

This is accomplished by breaking down the path of cancer treatment into steps such as “Accept your Disease” and “Find a Cancer Sponsor” and then offering resources to allow you to accomplish each step.

More specifically, the path is broken down into Goals, Tasks, and Steps.

A cancer patient trying to overcome his/her disease might have the following Goals:

1. Do Not Panic
2. Organize a Patient Support Network and Local Resources
3. Organize Finances
4. Prepare for Oncologist Appointments
5. Get a Second Opinion
6. Research and Understand the Disease
7. Finalize a Treatment Plan
8. Prepare for Treatment
9. Post Treatment Appointments and Test Results
10. Adopt an Anti-Cancer Diet
11. Adopt an Exercise Program

These Goals would then be divided into the Tasks required to complete them.

Tasks fall into three groups:

• Organizational – in this case, Organizing Your Medical Records and Organizing Your Finances
• Informational – Researching Your Disease, Researching Your Medicines, etc.
• Heroic – modeling your step after someone who has gone through the same or a similar experience. In this case, a Cancer Survivor or Volunteer Researcher.

Finally, similar or related tasks are grouped into Steps. Each Step contains a number of Tasks that must be completed in order to progress onto the next Step.

As you move from Task to Task, from Step to Step, and from Goal to Goal, your experiences and methods are recorded and can be published for others to benefit from.

The Mission Adaptive Plan helps you to accomplish any goal, no matter how trivial or heroic, and can make you an explorer, adventurer, and native guide, all at the same time.