Life Planning

[Ryex]

I've always thought of myself as someone who doesn't plan their life. I live spur of the moment, deciding at the drop of a hat to do something else entirely.

but now I realize that that's hardly true. It would be more accurate to say that I change plans to accommodate dynamic situations.

I say this because I DO plan my life. but instead of setting ridged goals and deadlines I make small chunks of hundreds of plans and peace them together as time passes. I'm thinking constantly, passing situation through my mind and deciding how I will respond to them long before such situations even become possible let alone happen.

On the outside people say I remain calm and change my plans at the drop of a hat, and don't seem phased by rapidly changing situations. they say I adapt really well. But I'm pretty sure that If I was caught off guard by a surprise event and had no previous notion of how I would deal with such a situation I would fall apart.

I don't adapt well in the strictest sense of the phrase. I do a stupid amount of preliminary planing and dynamically create a plan from those pieces I've thought about as the situation demands.

I offer these questions.

1) What is the best way to plan your life / deal with changing circumstances? is it what I do?
2) Is it a bad thing to be impulsive? by that I mean truly not planing your life to any great degree and just choosing on the spot to do something when an opportunity arises without any prolonged thought.

[Blizzard]

It is uncanny how similar our way of thinking is, Blizzard.

All should be in balance IMO. I think one should have an outline of what to do and so on in life and definitely know their priorities, but they should also be flexible enough to change things. This is where the priorities are important. Depending on your priorities, you will actually decide if and how you will adapt to a new situation. e.g. If a good friend is in serious trouble, I WILL make time on that same day.

As for being impulsive, again, balance. If you overdo it, it can become a big problem. But if you don't overdo it, it will definitely add a nice touch to your life and being spontaneous. I like to say that I have a general plan for some things, but when I am in the middle of something, I am in the middle of that and in the middle of the moment. I don't bother about thinking things through when I'm in the moment. Life is too short to plan all the time. But if you plan a bit here and there between those moments, it will help you to enjoy your moments more and to have more of them. Basically, while you're in there, do your thing and when you're not, think about it and plan a bit for the next time.

A good and small example is that when I'm hungry, I sometimes just go out and get something to eat. It's no big deal and nothing special, but it's one of the small things that I enjoy doing sometimes spontaneously. Nobody can take that away from me.

[winkio]

Oh this is a nice topic

I am more like the person you are mistaken for Ryex, someone that doesn't have strict plans and just takes life as it comes.  I don't do the planning ahead like you do, where you try to imagine and solve every possible scenario.

At any point in my life, I hold in my mind the large goals I have for my future.  Right now, for example, they are to finish problem sets this week, get into grad school, get a job, etc.  Once I have these goals in mind, I don't worry about how I will get there.  I don't plan out when I will work on problem sets, or how many grad schools I will look into this weekend, or any of that.  It's literally an on-off process.  For example, at 7:30, I was just chilling, playing some starcraft, not worrying about a thing.  At 8:00, I finish, check the time, and calmly begin working on a problem set.  At 11:00, I finish, and go back to doing whatever I want.  Since I don't have a rigid plan (or multiple plans like in Ryex's case), I can be interrupted, respond to surprises, and generally take anything that happens in stride.

So, to answer your particular questions,

1)  The best way to live your life?  Whatever makes you happy.  I can say that my way always keeps me happy and at manageable levels of stress, so I think it's the best way for me.  Maybe your way is the best way for you.

2)  I don't see my own impulsive behavior as a bad thing.  I still take the consequences of my decisions into account even when I make them on the spot, so even though I am impulsive I don't go around doing dangerous or irresponsible things.  In my opinion, my impulsiveness represents my freedom from the basic network on which society is organized.  I've often heard people say they don't have the time or the ability to do something, whether it's something insignificant like intramural soccer, or something important like following their dream of becoming a choir director.  I attribute this to rigid planning, and their inability to come up with a creative way to accomplish a goal.  In other words, I think my impulsiveness frees me from society's limits, and gives me the power to do whatever I truly want to do.

[Ryex]

see, this is where it gets strange. the end result is that I live my life with the same freedom as you winkio. I have my little pieces of a plan and if I feel like changing it, I switch pieces out and rearrange to accommodate priorities. I can change my plans at the drop of a hat, with the prerequisite that I've at least considered the situation before.

and it's not like I spend a large amount of time considering those situations and how to respond. it's more that when my brain starts idling I'll naturally start thinking about what kinds of things are likely to happen in the near future and how I will respond if they do.

[winkio]

Here's the test: would you be able to handle dropping out of college, your parents dying in a car crash, or having your arm amputated due to sickness?  If you answered yes, then we are on the same page.

Also, I see what you are saying about your thinking ahead.  You still have plenty of room to be spontaneous, you are just acting on precalculated notions of the result, right?

[Blizzard]

HOLY SHIT! I already finished college so I couldn't really answer the first question, but while I was reading your other questions, images and not just ideas, but complete solid structures on how to handle those situations were popping into my mind. Thank you so very much for writing this post, I just found out some huge stuff about myself, about the person I have become. *levels up*

Now back to Ryex. I didn't mean to hijack your topic, I just really wanted to share this.

[winkio]

I'm glad you got something out of that Blizz.  I've personally met people who each of those things has happened to.  The person who dropped out of college got a job as a mechanic that he really enjoys and is engaged to be married.  The person whose parents died was in the class below me at high school, and is now attending his first choice university to get a degree in computer science.  The person who has his arm amputated was a nobel laureate in physics who continued his cutting edge and high precision research.

My point in all of this is that there are no detailed and rigid plans that account for these things, at some point people have to be impulsive in order to adapt.  You can't go back and recalculate from the ground up in these scenarios, you just have to improvise, like all of these people did.

[Ryex]

Here's the test: would you be able to handle dropping out of college, your parents dying in a car crash, or having your arm amputated due to sickness?  If you answered yes, then we are on the same page.

Also, I see what you are saying about your thinking ahead.  You still have plenty of room to be spontaneous, you are just acting on precalculated notions of the result, right?

No, if any of those things happened I would not be able to handle it. they would induce a kind of panicked shell shock state where i can't think strait. In fact about a month ago My dad threatened to kick my out of the house and it was the first time in my life where I had reason to believe the threat. for the next two days I was too stressed out to really think. Those kinds of major changes are outside of my normal planning. If any of them were to happen I would withdraw into my self and do a lot of thinking until I figured it out. I'd probably become a recluse for a month or two. ... I don;t even ant to consider that situation any more. hopefully now that I've started thinking about it I'll have come up with some sort of plan if they happen.

as to your second statement. yes, your correct. I act on perceived results of my actions. which I've throughout before hand.

@Blizzard I'm glad your at a point in your life where you can even consider dealing with those types of situations

[Fantasist]

In the end, I believe it's all subjective. Different people do this differently. But I'd like to point out there are two aspects at question here: planning ahead and adapting to change. So we have a total of 4 combinations:

1 - Plan ahead, adapt to changes
2 - Plan ahead, but can't adapt to changes
3 - Don't plan ahead, adapt to whatever comes my way
4 - Don't plan ahead, can't accept unpleasant surprises

I believe I'm somewhere between 3 and 4. By best friend is a perfect 1.