Plan for reality, not ambition

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

Charles Darwin

Humans are not good at anticipating their future thoughts, feelings, or emotions.

How we think we’ll act in certain scenarios is entirely different than how we act in the moment.

We like to think we’ll be in the mood to go to the gym tomorrow instead of today. We like to think we’ll feel different if we have more money in the bank. We like to think we’d be the first person to help someone in trouble on the street.

But ultimately, how we behave in the moment is never what we hope or plan for.

As a result, we rarely follow through with our daily habits or lifelong goals, and what’s most important to us slips through the cracks.

The Challenge of Reality

Our normal reaction is to double down, making plans twice as rigid and goals ten times as ambitious.

We believe if we create the perfect plan we will accomplish everything we’d like to.

This belief only further exasperates the real problem: we can’t anticipate how we will feel or act in the moment.

The problem is not our planning or discipline.

The problem is the difference between our state of mind when we’re sitting in the comfort of our own home compared to the stressful and overwhelming environment in the real world.

When faced with the stress of real life, our perfect plan crumbles, and our ability to execute disintegrates along with it.

Adapting our Execution

If we over-plan we make the problem worse and if we stop planning altogether we won’t have a clear path forward.

But we shouldn’t throw our hands up in the air and give up when our plan is thwarted by reality.

We can still plan ambitiously and strive to become better, but to consistently do what we say we are going to do we need to leave room for adaptation.

When we accept we’ll face setbacks and unexpected stressors when executing our plan, we can leave room to adapt.

With room to adjust, our plans can bend without breaking.

Consistently good is better than occasionally great.

Planning for adaptation instead of planning for perfection lets us consistently accomplish what will help us become a bit better each day.

Prompts

Do you over-plan or under-plan?
What would a perfect day tomorrow look like down to the minute? How can you adjust that plan to leave room for adaptation?
In which areas of your life do you need to leave the most room for adaptation?

Deep Dive

James Clear on the Tim Ferriss Show
- A great podcast with a focus on the benefits of adapting plans instead of scrapping them.

This post is part of Prompted, a Series on IH.

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