Conscious Choice: The Plan is to Have No Plan

October 2005 | Body & Mind Health

The Plan is to Have No Plan

by Julia Mossbridge

I’ve always had a Plan, including short- and long-term goals and how I’ll get to each one. As an 11-year-old, I wrote out my one-, five-, and 10-year Plans in my journal. “Ten-Year Plan to Become a Scientist: 1) Learn more about fractions ....” Until a few months ago, I still did this (the plan part, not the fractions thing. I’ve got those, pretty much.) Predictably, things would work well for some time, but then some unplanned event would always get in the way. This unplanned event would usually be caused by some person who seemed to not have a Plan — or was, of all the nerve, ignorant of mine. This planning habit kept me feeling well-organized and slightly self-righteous. But in time, I noticed that my Plans made my life feel kind of sterile and ridiculous. I found myself setting up short- and long-term Plans for everything, from the initiation of my dating life to the completion of my dissertation. So this summer, I set an intention to learn about living in the moment and letting go of my attachment to control. (I tried not to plan on it, but, well, you know.) It took a while before my hope was fulfilled, and by then, of course, I’d forgotten what I’d asked for. One week in mid-summer, my son’s baby sitter mentioned that he couldn’t baby-sit for the rest of the week because a friend needed help moving. He’s a great baby sitter and definitely kind, but I was stunned with the lack of fanfare or remorse he had in changing his plan and, by default, mine. A person my age probably would have launched into a bit of a sob story or a long apology at this point, but not so this 19-year-old kid. His casual attitude was somehow refreshing.

Before I began my scramble to find childcare coverage, and before I could get frustrated with him, I was somehow stopped. I noticed how beautiful this situation was. This kid’s unwillingness to acknowledge my Plan and his part in destroying it made me less sure of its worth in the first place. It put me right smack into the present moment. I had planned to work the rest of the week, and he couldn’t facilitate that.

Now what? I realized that a thousand other things could have happened that would also have altered my Plan, and I couldn’t control any of them. It occurred to me that maybe our plans are just vain attempts to create a safe illusion of control. But when we follow our plans, they don’t actually give us more control, they just maintain the illusion, and at the same time they act as life-deadening agents. Nice insights, but I know I can’t live like my son’s baby sitter.

As much as I sometimes fantasize about it, I can’t return to the days of living a carefree life because someone else is paying my room and board. And if I remember correctly, it becomes somewhat of a drag not being able to guess where you’ll be from one day to the next. It sucks to not be in control of your life.

Maybe that’s why so many of us move so quickly from extreme planlessness to deadening organization. Attempting to get control over our lives, we can’t seem to avoid the pendulum swing to the opposite side. This brings me to an aside, if there is such a thing when writing about planlessness.

When I was converting to Judaism, I learned in my conversion class about the practice of keeping the Sabbath. For observant Jews, the Sabbath is a time of rest; no work is to be done during that time. I learned about all the constraints one is supposed to follow (no driving cars, using money, making phone calls, etc.) It became clear to me that, in order to strictly observe the Sabbath, I’d have to do a lot of planning. I knew I was capable of that level of commitment and certainly had the organizational skills to do it. But could it truly be a time of rest if I had a Plan for the Sabbath? Not for me. As a result, I’ve begun to observe the Sabbath in my own way.

Borrowing a little of the attitude carried off so effectively by my son’s baby sitter, at least for the 24-hour period between Friday and Saturday nights, I don’t have a Plan. OK, every other week I have a two-hour massage scheduled for Saturday morning, but that’s it. During these brief, weekly gifts of planlessness, I’ve made some important discoveries. I’ve learned that children are happiest when you have nowhere to go at any particular time, so that you can investigate sunflowers or cicada shells or old musical instruments you find in the basement.

I have discovered that my most memorable experiences are from these Sabbath days, when God gets to show me all the beauty that I can’t or won’t let myself see on the days when beauty is not part of my Plan. One of my favorite findings is that not having a Plan doesn’t mean you don’t have anything to do. In fact, the opposite turns out to be true. Without planned appointments, you can actually accept a spontaneous lunch invitation or a sudden urge to go swimming.

Best of all, the piece de resistance of my Planless Sabbath-Day Plan, is that it carries over to the rest of my life. Somehow, I seem to bring a little planlessness with me as I go through my work week. Despite this encroaching experience of unorganized time, I actually seem to be more productive at work, and I feel a renewed energy to do it.

Julia Mossbridge, a Chicago-based writer, is also a cognitive neuroscientist and the author of Unfolding: The Perpetual Science of Your Soul’s Work. (New World Library).

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