I don’t mean to imply that plans are … bad. Because they’re not.
After all, nothing happens without form. Boundaries are useful. Structure can — and should — be supportive.
And at the same time, we’re alive. And guess what? Life is a dynamic, organic, ever-changing thing of mystery and wonder.
Which is to say, you can’t plan for shit.
Of course, the act of planning can be kind of fun (and useful) — as long as you don’t get hung up on how things are actually going to happen. Because hahahahahahaha that could be a problem.
What we need here is a parable.
Or a long rambling story that might possibly bear relevance to the subject at hand. Is that a parable? God, I hope it is.
Because I want to tell you about my plan (back when I had one) for my Kitchen Table program.
The Kitchen Table was born in a vision.
September 2008. I was in Vancouver at Michael Port’s seminar (remember?), and he guided us through this semi-meditative visualization process thingy.
I dislike visualizations. Because I’m not a visual person. I don’t see stuff. I hear stuff. As you know.
But this time I did see. That my business had a massive hole in its center. A chasm.
My blog readers and my Shivanauts on one side, trying to figure out how to apply the concepts I’m always talking about here to stuff coming up in their day-to-day lives.
And my private coaching clients on the other side, who were already working with my techniques in a really deep way, and needed — I now realized — a support network other than me.
I looked at the hole.
I looked at the wholeness (also the hole-ness) of the hole. There was something beautiful and perfect about it, even though I also felt the sadness of missing.
And in an instant, I knew — no, I saw — what needed to be there.
Rising up was a bridge. A bridge that managed to be wide and sturdy, elegant and graceful, strong and flexible… all at the same time.
The bridge that launched a thousand plans.
So there I was with this gorgeous, wacky vision. Of framework and structure for an intentional community where people would commit to playing with what I teach and working on their stuff. For an entire year.
My head was exploding with curricula and itineraries and possibility.
And then I went home and started planning my ass off for the next several months until it opened.
I hired consultants. And coaches. And spent hours on the phone with friends and colleagues.
Oh yes. I filled entire notebooks with bits and pieces of plan. Overdoing it to death.
Useful because the act of planning was calming for me. But were the plans themselves useful? Not even slightly.
Even a rambling stream-of-consciousness post can have examples!
Example #1: planning ways to guarantee an active forum.
One of the things I was most concerned about when it came to turning my vision into a reality was awkwardness.
I have been involved in all kinds of online communities, and it so often seems as though it’s really just a few people who are really active, and everyone else just kind of hovers at the edges.
My brain decided that we needed to start planning — desperately — to come up with ways to avoid that situation. How would we make our forum an active one?
Blah blah blah. Months of consulting with the consultants. Back-up plans! Contingency plans! A plan for scenario X. A plan for scenario Y.
You already know what happened, right? My people are verbose and irrepressible and can’t stop posting even if you were going to beg them to. (yay!)
It’s been over a year since I opened the Kitchen Table.
And since day one, we’ve had an insanely active forum environment with hundreds of posts each day. So of course the real problem (the one we didn’t plan for) was everyone being completely overwhelmed by the busy.
Example #2: planning the website.
Yep. Had seventeen-hundred freakouts over this one too.
For example: one of my assistants recommended a programmer and we could never get him to do what we had asked for. Or even to respond to basic requests for information.
So my complicated, consultant-planned timeline plan-plan of a plan for how this thing was going to happen over a two month period ended up being completely irrelevant.
And then Nathan yelled at me to stop throwing good money after bad (“sunk costs! sunk costs! sunk costs!”) so I got my gentleman friend to find someone on elance who could build the site.
And bam. $250 and a day and a half later we had the website.
So the plan: not so helpful. But the “crap our plan doesn’t work” thing forcing us to find an emergency plan ended up being pretty great though.
Also, having friends like Nathan who are always right. I love you, Nathan!
So. A conclusion of sorts. And structure’s secret lover.
It’s kind of like this:
Plans aren’t that stable, but planning is fun and powerful.
Why? Because planning gives us the opportunity to hang out with what we want more of. The qualities that will be most useful in meeting the needs behind the plan.
So planning is good as a practice. One that gives you a structure in which you can interact with what you want and need.
And it’s really good for practicing sovereignty (being the king or queen of your own fabulous kingdom or queendom).
If planning can help you have a more conscious, intentional relationship with yourself., yay planning. Especially if you like it.
But as far as the end goal? And everything that’s going to happen along the way?
I hope you like surprises.
Because you really can’t plan for any of what’s going to happen. And getting used to that — making room in your structure for weirdness and surprises — is what lets you access flow.
Flow.
Flow is awesome. Flow is structure’s secret lover. Flow is where stuff happens.
Caveat, of course. Because how could we not?
As Paul Grilley says, people vary.
Hence the “People Vary” caveat. Different levels of plannishness can be useful for different kinds of people. You might be closer to one extreme or another on the continuum, and that’s okay.
The principles I’m talking about here — having a conscious relationship with yourself and your stuff, being aware of the relationship between structure and flow — still hold.
But how you choose use and apply this stuff?
Completely up to you. I’m not at all trying to define either your reality or your experience. Because that would be kind of obnoxious.
Oh, and the Twitter Version of this post. In three parts.
Part 1:
Like it or not, you kind of have to let a lot of things happen organically. They will ANYWAY so you might as well go along for the ride.
Part 2:
Plans = problematic. But planning = powerful stuff. Well, as long as you don’t fall in love with the result or how you’re going to get there.
Part 3:
So yeah. Next time I’m totally making flan instead.
p.s. Ha. I got through an entire post called The Illusion of Planning and didn’t make one “it’s just one guy” joke . You know, until now. Extra points for me!
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But you did get the end result you planned for, right? So wouldn’t you say that you can’t plan how you’re going to get there, but you can plan ON getting there, if you know that’s what you want?
Maybe that’s what you’re saying.
God laughs when we make flan.
.-= Laura Belgray´s last post … “F” is for Food Emporium. And for my boycott. =-.
Maybe this time, instead of a band that’s Just One Guy, it’s something else, like the pitch for a mid-season TV pilot: He’s Structure! She’s Flow! They fight crime!
Oh, but seriously, Havi, thank you so much for this post, because this makes so much sense to me, and I find it deeply comforting. I do use planning as a way of grounding and soothing myself, but the process becomes less helpful when I find myself making little notes in the margins, chock full of exclamation marks and underlines: “I *absolutely will* do these things! This *will happen*!! I *really mean it* this time!!!” Maybe I can try releasing some of that pressure, and save myself a lot of stress (and ink!)
.-= Kathleen Avins´s last post … Dramatis personae =-.
YES THANK YOU. This has been my guiding principle, ever since life tossed up some carefully-laid plans and gave me something more interesting instead.
.-= Tiara´s last post … How Not to Write about Africa… [1] =-.
“Useful because the act of planning was calming for me.”
See, I think that’s key. Contingency planning frees up your brain to address the actual issues that come up. Even if they’re completely different. All that other seemingly useless work helps you feel more prepared. (Where ‘your/you’ equals ‘my/me.’)
Makes me think of a favorite quote from my speed reading teacher in college: “Write things down to unclutter your mind.”
Et voila! Closing in on 5 years of blogging. 😉
Funny coincidence and once more perfect timing: I spent all last night pondering on my own planning and how to do it and whether to do it at all and if I should first define a goal and then plan or plan and see what goal it leads me to etc. In brief, plan stucknesses all over.
“Flow is where stuff happens” – I need to stay in the flow and not be paralysed by the search for a so far non existent plan.
And (@ Claire) before I went to bed I wrote a few things down that I want and need to get done this week and that I felt were making me nervous.
Oy, planning + me = major ick. Sure, I can plan. I just have major trouble estimating the time it takes to do things or sticking to plans. That’s all. Planning does help me interact with what I’m doing, like you describe, but plans? Ick.
Until one day someone told me this: there is a spectrum of people that goes from planner to chaotic person. The ultimate planner neatly divides a project into steps that are done before a specific time and gets all done on time. There is not much room for surprises there: the planner panics. The ultimate chaotic person knows what is the end goal, but starts to endlessly collect information, brainstorm with people, ponder away and out of nowhere comes up with some solution or product or whatever. Maybe or maybe not on time. Put the two together in a team and you have real fun if you don’t understand where each one is coming from.
I always thought I was a planner. After all, I spend a lot of time planning and the educational system more or less only recognizes the existence of planners. But now, I think it is the people around me that are planners and require me to have a realistic time frame for doing things that leads to finishing a project, but I am actually more of the chaotic type. So now I know. And now I know how to communicate with planners and still be a chaotic person myself. Yay!
Interesting you should post this now – I’ve just hit a watershed today about my relationship with planning.
Recently I’ve been thinking about:
~ how the whole goals/planning thing presupposes that you can predict and track what seems to me to be a pretty surprising array of causes, effects and possibilities.
~ how I can work on very gently holding on to an intention to have something happen, but then not holding on too much to how it happens (and I don’t mean in a The Secret kind of way – p’tooee).
There is something that keeps coming up for me about *preparation* – how so many things are about getting ready/practicing and then letting go of it in the moment.
I do find a particular fascination in spotting patterns though…
(Oh, my watershed? – having loads to do and not dreading any of it and so being unable to decide exactly *what* to do. Interesting. New strategies needed, methinks.)
.-= Andrew Lightheart´s last post … And so it begins… =-.
VERY interesting. I love to plan. LOVE to plan. Seriously, I can do it all day. And then not actually, you know, DO any of it. That’s how much I love it.
And I deeply believe in the power of plans, as a necessary step to Doing Things, even if I don’t stick to the plan even slightly.
But maybe that’s because I’m one of those planner people.
.-= Willie Hewes´s last post … New Year’s Good Intentions =-.
@Andrew “~ how the whole goals/planning thing presupposes that you can predict and track what seems to me to be a pretty surprising array of causes, effects and possibilities.”
That hits the nail right on the head for me. I am working with Goddess Leonie’s workbook, and some of the categories of goals I am just plain stuck on because I don’t see where the baby steps are to get to where I want to go.
It has been so hard for me to make plans, for the past three years the contingency has been “of course Marty will get a job” and now I am in the do-loop of “yeah but I thought that before and he still didn’t so why even bother” and now he is in school so there is that waiting while he finishes up. I thought maybe it was just undiagnosed depression or hopelessness. And maybe part of it is. But it could also be that I’m working from a flawed hypothesis.
Not that I’m not going to keep trying. But maybe I will try going at it from a different angle. (and make some flan while I’m looking)
Thank you all for the post and the comments!
.-= Andi´s last post … Women in Fiber =-.
Separating the value of the act of planning from attachment to adherence to the plan? I think I need to go lie down.
.-= Darcy´s last post … Day 71: Let the cleansing begin =-.
A Flan! I LOVE the idea of making flans. I can DO that. It relieves all the pressure of that ‘follow through and deliver ickiness.
Marvelous. I’d tweet this if I could figure out how to do that part, but I haven’t yet. But it’s totally tweetable. Cause more people must know about the flan vs plan thing so they’ll feel better too.
@lightheart, which is one of the best names ever, totally relate. It becomes like doing math, where A must be assigned a new value and that new value must be proven with steps showing the work. Flans can excuse us from needing to show the work…and totally tick off math teachers across the planet who insist that getting the right answer without being able to prove it by showing the work = wrong answer.
@Willie lol@having plans and then NOT doing them! That’s like a pre-flan!
All this gentleness stuff and things…I LIKE it. Makes me all mushy inside. Thanks!
.-= Wulfie´s last post … Soul Stalking – Part Three =-.
This is good for me to hear. (First comment by the way! I discovered your blog last week and I love love love it.) I’m pretty comfortable with the making-and-releasing of plans when it comes to practical life stuff… mostly because I unabashedly plan for fun, and in impossible detail. But I also have this habit of “planning” my interactions with people, especially when there’s a difficult subject that needs to be addressed. I will script a dozen different conversations, for example, adjusted for all the possible things they might say. And of course they wind up saying something I never thought of, or my perfect, planned intro to the subject doesn’t happen. And I feel all off-balance.
So I’ve been telling myself I need to stop doing that and just let the moment happen. But I can’t seem to stop. So I love the idea of treating those plans as a practice, part of my own preparation, but not something I need to take with me into the interaction. Thank you!
.-= Virginia Ruth´s last post … Waiting in the void =-.
@Laura – “God laughs when we make flan” is the funniest thing I have ever heard. And will now have to say that all the time. I think it’s also true. Which makes it funnier.
@Kat – They fight crime! How have I never Itemized *that*? GENIUS.
@Darcy – tea and pillows? love and cookies?
@Wulfie – mushiness!
Love to all. And to your plans. Or non-plans. Or however you do things your way — it works for me.
Virginia Ruth-
I used to do that too! The planning of the interaction! What’s that about? Sometimes it’s helpful.
In General-
I used to like to plan and be good at it.
I used to say a lot of “And then what? And then what?”
I can also make a swell flow chart.
Sometimes it’s calming. Sometimes it’s what you do to avoid doing what you should be doing. Sometimes it’s a ramp up to the next place.
Sometimes, though, it’s overwhelming. Sometimes there are too many places that say…”And then a miracle happens”…
So now, I just imagine the outcome, and then I think of how it could flow out. And then I just make stuff. and it all comes together.
And that feels good too.
Really happy that I’m not alone in this.
.-= Bridget´s last post … Inner Me Comes with Bitchin’ Accessories =-.
oh yeah my twitter name is @intuitivebridge
@Willie I can plan all day long too! Except thanks to making it a mere 15 pages into Havi’s Dissolve Procrastination book, I realized I was using planning as procrastination. FAIL.
So now I’m trying to make no flans, er plans (god I love flan, ahem) just… dreams. I never stick to a plan anyway, nope, never.
I can plan and research forever and never ever move forward. 🙂
So my plan (heehee) is now to actually ACT on those steps that are living in my studio journal to go where I need to get. Speaking of which… love you all, but gotta go draw 3 diagrams today so I can put up a new product by the end of this week!!! YAY!
.-= Romilly´s last post … Chinese Court Embroidery – Part 1 =-.
This is one of those posts that puts in to words lots of the stuff I’ve been thinking about projects and planning.
I suppose planning projects is like any form of self-care…if we take it into the realms of “should” or “success vs. failure”, it can become a source of stuckness.
Tricky to find that just-right balance of planning enough to be a source of support, but not so much that it slides into overwhelm.
.-= Victoria Brouhard´s last post … Noticings on the Hiking Trail and Elsewhere =-.
@Bridget I think nails it – think of the outcomes and imagine how you get there.
allow for mind-mapping, flow, thoughts, reflection…….
i think it works differently for people depending on their general learning/thinking bent.. @havi you mentioned hearing everything…
i see it and hear it.. but with this kind of stuff i have to see it..
eee yuuuu!
I feel full, uninspired today. Woman Who Has Lost Her Plans and Mojo. So it doesn’t entirely fit with this post. I am soooo good at Not Doing and Not Planning and Dreaming Lots and also Angsting and getting stuck.
How long does the new year feeling drag on for before we get used to life again in all its glorious inperfection?
Moaning Minnie! Pah!
I am gonna sneak a little peek at the Dissolving Procrastinating Do Da. In the meantime I give myself, to beging with, a half hearted permission to feel Stucky and Gripey and no they’re not Dwarves.
Yay to all of you who are in a better zone. I still love to hear about you all and Selma doing your thing, planning your thing and sometimes not doing your thing.
Ooo and Bridget. Flowing into things. That sounds blissful. I’ve had those moments in the past and have had some lovely memories and tingly feelings of remebering and embodying this again in the last few months. Lovely to be reminded of someone else surrendering to their flow and allowing stuff to move through you, kind of thing.
Hm, this sounds suspiciously like the process behind launching my Blueprint. I have hundreds of pages of notes and outlines and scripts and process maps.
And the result of all that planning actually is in the Blueprint, but I don’t ever look at that stuff as I’m, you know, making the stuff. It was really just a process of Filling My Head With Intentions so that my unconscious could bake it up to be exactly what it should be.
“Prepare like a MoFo on Meth, then Wing It” could be my motto, if I had a motto.
I am in love with Laura now and forever for “God laughs when we make flan.” That is some serious scary genius.
So now do we flan a brunch? Because this is going to get super confusing.
.-= Sonia Simone´s last post … What Makes Marketing Hard? =-.
I don’t know how to flan a brunch but I do know that I’m really hungry now!
@Sonia It reminds me of writing novel length fiction, or at least one method of doing so, where you write everything down and use maybe a tenth of it. You catalog your Main Character’s favorite foods, childhood pets, what their bedroom looked like in college, what it looks like now, what’s in their wallet, what the antagonist’s medical allergies are, etc etc etc.
Chances are, you’re not going to use any of that information but it does help paint a very clear picture of who your people are (Perfect Customer! Right People!), where you want to take them, and what you and they are going to get out of it.
.-= Amy´s last post … Give Yourself Permission =-.
Havi, you crack me up. I’ve started this year with the motto, ‘failing to plan is planning to fail”. So far, I’ve got myself as a stick figure shooting arrows at difficult clients, throwing rocks at impossible ones, and blowing kisses at easy ones. And the plan is, to get rid of the stoning victims one by one, start blowing kisses to the Wilhelm Tell victims and taking the kissy-kissy ones to lunch. So far, my planning is working. Let’s see what the rest of the week brings!
Why of course you’d write this post just when I needed it. Were you planning on doing that?!
I have been up my own arse, grappling with the question “what next?”. I’ve just come off this super high: article getting published on Etsy and other miscellany that no one wants to really know. The point is, I immediately wanted to start planning because the fall from the high seemed to traumatic.
It is traumatic, so I need some flow.
I’m gonna “row, row, row MY boat gently down the stream, merrily, merrily, merrily life is but a dream.”
Thanks for the song!
.-= Lydia, Clueless Crafter´s last post … Textured Time =-.
Interesting post.
I have several friends who can always see the baby steps to the end of a project. It makes me crazy because I only ever find the final picture!
I try to be like my friends all the time. Because, of course, I assume they are doing it right! Hmmm…Maybe I just need to be me and focus at the end, allowing for the steps to FLOW! Breathing better already.
Wow, thanks Havi!
I found planning this year much easier and more fun when it involved those giant post-it notes that stick to the wall, and colored markers and I pretended like I was a project manager at a huge corporation. And now all the ideas are in the workroom of my office and I put smiley faces on the things I get done.
This part really nailed it: “Plans = problematic. But planning = powerful stuff.”
Too often we get caught up in how things are *supposed* to go that we miss the wonderful things that are actually happening organically.
Thank you for this important reminder.
Glad to know I am so not alone with the full notebooks, envelopes with scribbles on them as I talk to friends/colleagues/coaches and piles of plans. But you know it all sits in the brain and subconscious and we pull from it as needed. Files in the brain that wouldn’t be there if we didn’t plan first.
.-= Susan´s last post … Online Therapy Institute Offers Courses =-.
@Sonia- “Plan like a MoFo on Meth and then wing it” has me laughing out loud, and telling my 10 year old that once again, I’m not going to explain to him what’s so funny on mommy’s computer! This is totally my strategy. When I was teaching undergrads I’d write my whole lecture out and then talk for an hour with no notes.
The super funny thing is that I’m writing on this exact topic for my blog tomorrow!
Must be something in the air!
.-= Liz´s last post … Playing to Your Strengths =-.
This planner here really enjoyed this post. It captures everything that is true about planning! I love the following quote… and may need to hang it up in my office somewhere:
“Plans aren’t that stable, but planning is fun and powerful.”
Good timing Havi. I was planning yesterday and was busy telling myself what a waste of time it was to plan since I never STICK to the plan. But I do – not in neat straight lines, but in a wonderful cooking chemistry magic way. Put in the ingredients and boof! it all comes out in the end. ALSO made me realise that having written it down in the first place, I can recognise how far I have come, and how much I have achieved – I am so inclined to forget that part.
Flan! That’s so funny! I always say flan instead of plan! Hurrah for verbal silliness!
I’m pretty sure Structure’s Secret Lover is just one guy.
One other thing Paul Grilley says that I love is “Don’t be dogmatic.” It also seems to fit well here. I hung out with him (non-sucky DVD style) last night. Thanks again for that!
I’m loving reading about all these different planning styles! Twitter version… life is what happens while we’re making other flans?
.-= Sandra´s last post … An emoji is worth a thousand words =-.
I love the simplicity of “Plans aren’t that stable, but planning is fun and powerful.”
Your post and the comments following have been wonderful for me to read on this sleepless night.
.-= cathy´s last post … at the heart of art and creation =-.