Here’s Why Planning Ahead In Life Never Works For Me
By: Christie Li
Tags: Self, Advice, Life Lessons, Self Help, Life

Here’s Why Planning Ahead In Life Never Works For Me

When freestyle is my only lifestyle

Photo by Sonnie Hiles on Unsplash

I’m the kind of person who never likes to plan. For most of the things I do, I go by my mood.

Whether it is my schedule tomorrow, this coming week, or my plans after I graduate from university, I like to go by freestyle.

You can call me spontaneous, but as I grow older in life, this idea amplifies and resonates with me.

Here’s why.

Plans don’t work anymore

When people ask me where do I see myself in xxx years, I will never have a definite answer to it, regardless of the number of years mentioned.

The world is changing rapidly each day, and so am I. Even if the question is “where do I see myself in one year time”, there are still trillions of possibilities on how my life could’ve worked out. I could’ve dropped out of university within that one year and find myself working anywhere.

The year 2020 is the best example of how rapidly the world changes.

Here’s one real-life example from Hong Kong a month ago: one of the biggest local airlines in Hong Kong (Dragonair) announced that they would cease to operate without prior notice. Within that one day, numerous flight attendants and other staff working for that airline lost their jobs all of a sudden.

Who would’ve been able to foresee that?

To those who relied heavily on this job, whether or not did they planned to save up in a few years' time to buy a house, or to start a family, or to get a raise in this company; plans are ruined in just one single day, that simple.

Mindset: Life is too spontaneous for plans to be accurately displayed in the distant future.

Whether or not if it's the unpredictability, the political instability of a country, or my own evolving self, there are so many factors that influence the final play.

Perhaps automated cars would be well implemented into the city where all drivers or chauffeurs become extinct. Perhaps in a few year’s time, something happened and all veterinarians will run out of jobs, meaning what I study at university is no longer useful career-wise. Perhaps I ended up living in a country that I would’ve never imagined in the first place.

This is why plans usually don’t work.

Plans make people worry more

People like to worry about the unknown and uncertainty. That is, of course, the future.

I’ve seen too many people worrying about the future constantly that they forgot how to live.

My dad likes to thoroughly plan out his life. Unfortunately, the tragedies this year ruined many of them. Never can he foresee that the economy could be this bad, and never would he foresee that it can be this bad for his company’s business.

He worries a lot about the unemployment rate and the trend of pay cuts in the industry. From what I know, it put a huge amount of stress on him throughout this year. As much as I wanted to comfort him as his daughter, he is inevitably frustrated and constantly worried.

Sadly, my dad is not the only victim of the catastrophes this year. This happens to my mom, my family relatives, and friends of people I know too.

What if I’m unemployed, how am I able to sustain myself or my family’s expenses in the future? What should I do if I get a pay cut? How can I sustain the expensive university tuition fee?

Questions like this spiral in my parent’s minds most of the time. One difference between my mom and dad, however, is that my mom decides to worry less by planning less.

Not that she doesn’t plan for the future, she has a vague framework. She just doesn’t plan out every single move in life.

Mindset: learn to worry about things only when they happen.

Halfway through 2020, my mom decides that it's useless to worry about things that have not yet happened, after numerous sleepless nights and stressful moments.

She did brainstorm what could possibly happen in the near future and some of the vague possibilities of how she can adapt to those changes. Yet, she decides to let go of the problems instead of holding onto them day and night.

After all, life is too spontaneous for us to come up with an exaggerated plan for those problems because there isn’t a way to predict the future in the first place.

How can people live a joyful life sustainably when all they ever do is worry about unprecedented things in life?

Make frameworks, not detailed plans in life

I like to use frameworks instead of plans to approach life.

There is a difference between the two. Whilst for plans I might have to come up with the precise solutions or methods, a framework is more of a vague guideline.

As mentioned above, plans don’t work for me because of the spontaneity and unpredictability in life, I follow my heart instead.

Literally, follow my own heart.

I listen to myself, understand what I like and what I dislike, then use this as my compass in life. Although I don’t know where I’m headed in life, I do know that:

I hate a 9–5 job

I hate being stuck in an office

I hate dealing with children or any annoying stubborn clients

I like outdoor activities

I like an exotic and adventurous lifestyle

I don’t want to be stuck in the rat race

For this, I have a vague sense of direction about where I want to be. It gave me clues about the type of life I’ll like, whilst maintaining flexibility and adaptability for unprecedented things in the future.

Mindset: build a rough life design, not a precise life plan.

The fact that I don’t want to be stuck in the rat race, or be limited by money problems motivates me to get creative in finding ways to gain income. Though I’m still exploring different pathways, it gave me a structure of how my life can play out.

Maybe I can be a wildlife vet? A freelance blogger? Or a scuba diving instructor as my side hustle simultaneously? Perhaps I’ll be living or working in Africa or South America for a year or two.

As I’m constantly evolving, I learn something new about myself as I continue my life journey. Perhaps I will discover a new hobby in 5 years that will end up becoming my career? By following my heart, I build a rough life design instead of a precise plan.

As to the question of sustaining my own expenses? I’ll worry about the problem when it happens.