Some familiar quotes have been swirling in my head over the last couple of weeks or so, as I’ve been making plans for the New Year:
Mann tracht und Gott lacht (Yiddish: man plans and God laughs)
Everyone’s got a plan until they get punched in the face (Mike Tyson)
Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable (Dwight D. Eisenhower)
Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans (John Lennon)
Jennifer Gresham, of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, says that many people try to plan every day to squeeze the last bit of productivity and efficiency out of it, only in the end to be left with a completely uninteresting life, with no room for surprise, creativity, serendipity, or the freedom that makes life worth living (see about 1m08s into this great video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWNgwJZDW3E).
If planning is apparently so useless (maybe even harmful!), why do it? Can we plan our days and be efficient at getting stuff done, and at the same time be creative and leave room for the freedom and surprises that make life worth living?
It turns out that there is what I call the planning paradox: the seemingly contradictory outcome that planning can actually lead to more productivity, creativity, and…
