How much should you plan your life?
I really struggle with this question.
On one hand, I tend to be a natural planner. During periods of intense planning in my life, I meticulously mapped out my entire days, down to the minute. I found this to be ineffective over the long term because life is unpredictable, and as soon as the plan got derailed, it became mostly useless.
However, I'm not the sort to wake up and simply let my whims dictate my day. At the very least, I need a to-do list or a set goal for the day. Because if I don’t have something to accomplish, then I will feel like I have accomplished nothing, and the day will have been wasted.
So, what would be the right balance?
You can't exactly schedule spontaneity and serendipity. It’s not like you can say, “At 5:00 PM this evening, I am going to run into an old friend and we will chat for 45 minutes about everything that is happening in our lives.” Even if we could see into the future, would we really want to? It would take all of the magic out of the moment.
But—and this is a big but—one must acknowledge that in order to achieve anything in this life, one must have some level of discipline. For instance, I recently discovered that Vincent Van Gogh, despite suffering from psychological illnesses throughout his life, managed to paint 900 works, effectively producing a new piece approximately every 36 hours. Perhaps it wasn’t discipline that drove Van Gogh to paint, but he still accomplished a lot in his life because he did the things he needed to do.
Maybe it is that simple.
Just do the things you need to do.
Each person will know what that means to them. Let everything else naturally fall into place.
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How much should you plan your life?
I really struggle with this question.
On one hand, I tend to be a natural planner. During periods of intense planning in my life, I meticulously mapped out my entire days, down to the minute. I found this to be ineffective over the long term because life is unpredictable, and as soon as the plan got derailed, it became mostly useless.
However, I'm not the sort to wake up and simply let my whims dictate my day. At the very least, I need a to-do list or a set goal for the day. Because if I don’t have something to accomplish, then I will feel like I have accomplished nothing, and the day will have been wasted.
So, what would be the right balance?
You can't exactly schedule spontaneity and serendipity. It’s not like you can say, “At 5:00 PM this evening, I am going to run into an old friend and we will chat for 45 minutes about everything that is happening in our lives.” Even if we could see into the future, would we really want to? It would take all of the magic out of the moment.
But—and this is a big but—one must acknowledge that in order to achieve anything in this life, one must have some level of discipline. For instance, I recently discovered that Vincent Van Gogh, despite suffering from psychological illnesses throughout his life, managed to paint 900 works, effectively producing a new piece approximately every 36 hours. Perhaps it wasn’t discipline that drove Van Gogh to paint, but he still accomplished a lot in his life because he did the things he needed to do.
Maybe it is that simple.
Just do the things you need to do.
Each person will know what that means to them. Let everything else naturally fall into place.
