“A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.” ~Proverb
My name is Katie and I am an over-planner. I spend way too much time laying out meticulous plans as if they were exquisite bejeweled gowns. I spread them across beautiful handmade notebooks, trim them with pink and green headings and sub-headings, and step back to admire them when I’m done.
They are tomorrow’s plans. Each one more stylish, more elaborate, more organized than the last. Each one the perfect plan. But in reality, not one of them is. Once the latest plan has been printed or pasted or posted, I grow weary of it and want another.
I’m addicted to perfecting my plans, but not actually executing them.
This repetitive crafting of the next best laid plan has me caught in a time warp where I’m forever looking ahead, forever color-coding the future, forever laying out a decorative path that I don’t have time to explore because I’m too busy planning and perfecting.
My perfect plans are nothing more than plastic-sealed sofas no one ever touches or perfectly manicured rose gardens no one ever smells.
They are an illusion, they are excuses, they are busy-makers, they are attempts to control the chaos, and they only succeed in helping me avoid the real work of digging and pushing and acting and living today, not tomorrow.
Maybe your plans feel this way too. Do you find yourself planning and organizing and researching and preparing, but never really getting down to mastering anything except planning?
You could be like me—a bit of a perfectionist, a slight over-achiever, a touch bossy, a tad of a control freak, but I bet you are a whole lot more than that. You’re also likely a soulful human being with dreams and goals and a desire to live purposefully and joyfully.
If so, here’s a new plan of attack that just might get you out of your perfect planning rut. Choose a simple, heartfelt habit and do it every day. Don’t worry about being perfect or doing everything all at once, just repeat this habit each and every day.
Today, I will walk the dog, grab a coffee, then come home and write a few pages of my novel. Now there’s a good plan—a plan that I can do today and maybe even repeat tomorrow.
Maybe I’ll end up getting in shape, feeling good about life, and finishing that book I’ve been writing.
Maybe simple daily habits will fuel my dreams. Maybe action trumps perfection. Maybe my purpose in life is not way up ahead buried in the folds of some perfect plan. Maybe it’s right here inside my life. I just need to step towards it with a good plan in one hand and a dog leash in the other.
Photo by Steve-h
About Katie Tallo
Katie Tallo is the proud mother of a new puppy named Levi. She writes about simple, joyful life change at Momentum Gathering and runs a course called The Habit Course with Leo Babauta and Barrie Davenport. Spring registration begins next week.
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