plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.
– einsenhower
When the future is changing so quickly, planning could feel like a feeble attempt to gain a sense of control. But uncertainty does not render planning pointless. Plan for things to not go to plan.
Plans are not accurate roadmaps. They help you clarify next steps and give you a sense of direction. You cannot possibly expect to wander in the direction of your destination and get there faster than you would if you had a plan. There are too many distractions.
Planning != locking yourself in. It shouldn’t be limiting. Not sticking to plan != failure. Expect things to not go to plan. Sometimes consistency means adaptability.
Your plan is just the current best way you know that might get you to where you want to go. You have to keep collecting feedback and reorienting.
Planning + continual adjustment = success.
When you don’t achieve your goal, it’s not because your plan sucked, but because you failed to adapt your plan and execute.
Even if your goals end up changing, it’s okay. Uncertainty is a certainty. Change is the only constant. It’s okay to backtrack. Just don’t lose your root node.
You don’t need an entire game plan. You don’t need to know 10 moves in advance. Just worry about the next move, which will change the 9 moves after it. We overestimate set-up, and underestimate the power of course correction. (related: Gall’s Law)
If you can’t figure out the best move, just avoid being stupid - don’t make the same mistake twice. Prevent/avoid difficulties rather than solving them.
If you do not plan and give yourself constraints, you will observe Parkinson’s Law over and over again. Your unconstrained project will grow and crowd out other things that matter.
From Four Thousand Weeks - Time Management for Mortals:
Do not plan to gain control. Plan to gain clarity.
The more compulsively you plan for the future, the more anxious you feel about any remaining uncertainties, of which there will always be plenty.
The obsessive planner, essentially, is demanding certain reassurances from the future—but the future isn’t the sort of thing that can ever provide the reassurance he craves, for the obvious reason that it’s still in the future.
The fuel behind worry, in other words, is the internal demand to know, in advance, that things will turn out fine.
A surprisingly effective antidote to anxiety can be to simply realize that this demand for reassurance from the future is one that will definitely never be satisfied—no matter how much you plan or fret.
All a plan is—all it could ever possibly be—is a present-moment statement of intent. It’s an expression of your current thoughts about how you’d ideally like to deploy your modest influence over the future. The future, of course, is under no obligation to comply.
Dive In
the only method I know of for finding actual good plans is to take a bad plan and slam it into the world, to let evidence and the feedback impinge upon your strategy, and let the world tell you where the better ideas are.
Most of your outcome will depend on luck, timing, and your ability to actually get out of your own way and start somewhere. The way to end up with a good plan is not to start with a good plan, it’s to start with some plan, and then slam that plan against reality until reality hands you a better plan.
Recklessness, as a virtue, is about being able to throw caution to the wind. It’s about being able to commit yourself fully to the best path before you, and then change your entire life at the drop of a pin as soon as a better path appears.
Recklessness is in the ability to say “screw the odds, I’m going to push forward on this path as hard as I can until a better path appears.” If the odds are low, a better path is more likely to appear sooner rather than later
What do the odds have to do with your ability to commit? Why is their epistemic state preventing them from entering the emotional state that would most help them succeed?
Fall into life
You can’t design a path with an imperfect world. The map always melts.
As children we look at adults to give us structure, the green light. But the transition to autonomy is owning your own narrative. Grace. Discipline. Vision. Those are things you can only give yourself.
instead of imagining my life linearly, I see my life as a constant inward circle, getting closer with each turn to the center.