I used to love making a plan! I’d make them for the whole year, for months, weeks days and at some point I even planned down to the minutes. I never actually stuck to my plans though. At first, I blamed myself, assuming I was too undisciplined. Then I blamed the planning systems.
Every time a plan didn’t work on, I moved on to a new system until I finally got it. Planning had become another project. Fun, sure, but utterly useless as a tool to achieve my aims. What works for me instead? Going with the flow.
Planning = another project
In Barabara Sher’s book Refuse to Choose she identifies the cyclical Scanner. People who focus on a subject or skill, then ignore it for weeks, months or even years before they return to focus on it again. I’m definitely a cyclical Scanner and I love it. One day this year I realised that planning was one of the activities I cycle back to. Not because my plans led to results but because I enjoyed making plans.
This was the second step in my epiphany. I’d taken the first one at the beginning of the year when I gave up goals. I never reached them anyway which depressed me. Why didn’t I reach the goals I set? Because on the way I realised that I wanted something else after all. So these days I work exclusively with aims. Move in a general direction and you can’t possibly miss. Success is simple: just keep on going.
And now it was time to also say goodbye to planning. Or was it? Because if it’s fun, why not keep doing it? But plans, like goals, made me feel like I failed. Or worse, I kept redrafting my plans because they changed all the time! I ended up spending more time drafting plans than implementing them. Why did I keep going back to planning? Turns out what I enjoyed about the process was imagining great scenarios for my future. I still do that part. Now I just call it daydreaming.
Flow
So if I have no more goals and make no more plans, what do I do all day? This is the hilarious part: I get more done in a day than ever before. And I don’t mean busywork. Real tasks that move me in the direction I want to go, like shipping courses, writing blog posts, creating recipes and even posting on social media.
What’s the secret? I stay in the flow. Here’s how it works: Before I start a new task or activity, I ask myself “What do I want to do next?” Not tomorrow, not in an hour. Right here and right now. Out of bad habits my mind usually starts planning the rest of the day or at least the next few hours. But I resolutely quench those thoughts and focus solely on my next task.
No matter what the answer is, I take that action and focus fully on it. Sometimes the “task” is a small creative activity, like making quote graphics. In my old planning days the small tasks would never even have made my to-do-lists because I considered them unimportant. Other times, the answer to my question is eat, do Yoga or take a shower. Whatever it is, I focus on it and don’t even allow myself to plan what I’ll do afterwards.
Ever since I’ve embraced the flow, I feel happier and calmer the entire day. I also have clarity. Turns out what muddled my mind was the pressure of trying to figure out my entire future and feeling the urge to “fix” the plan every time something changed. Now I just concentrate on the task right in front of me. No matter how long it takes.
Luxury?
Doing whatever I feel like doing sounds like a luxury. Or reckless and irresponsible. Possibly flaky if I gave you a list of all the different things I do in a day. But it’s not. It’s insanely efficient. Once I refused to make those constant mental plans about the future and worry about what would happen next, I had so much more energy and time! It’s ridiculous how much of both I wasted on the past and the future. Being present in the now and focusing on the task at hand is the most productive approach I have ever used.
What about those pesky things I don’t want to do, you may ask? Do I just not do them? Here is the truly miraculous part. For a few weeks I did ignore the stuff I didn’t want to do. I worked towards my aims task by task, minute by minute. I also rested and had a lot of fun. And guess what. When those pesky things I had been putting off (in some cases for a year) turned up on my radar again, I had practised taking action and no longer imagining nightmare scenarios that I just did them.
Choosing the flow is one of the best shifts I have ever allowed in my life. And I am allowing it again and again and again. Do I sometimes have doubts? Sure. People expect us to have plans. Ideally with charts attached. And if that works for you, fantastic! For me though, working in the flow is perfect. Being present in my life is the best decision I am making fifty to a hundred times every day.