In this article, the author discusses disaster-recovery planning in light of his personal experience following Hurricane Katrina. He relates the advice he received from Captain Joseph R. Castillo, Chief of Operations for the U.S. Coast Guard Eighth District in New Orleans: Focus on the process of planning, and not on building a plan. The author contends that it is necessary to establish a reasonable set of disaster-response principles to cover the fundamentals, but also to think in terms of the broader aspects of a disaster's impact. Plans need to have flexibility as their defining feature, and it is best to keep the plan fairly simple and straightforward, avoiding the overly-complicated and expensive disaster-recovery plans. (Contains 1 note.)