Where do you see yourself in five years? What kind growth do you want for yourself in the near-future? How long are you going to live nomadically for?
I don’t know, I don’t know, and I don’t know. Is that bad? Maybe. But I’m not convinced it is.
I used to be very planned. When I graduated from college, I had a good job, and the rough timeline in my head was that I’d get married by my late 20’s, have a kid by the time I was 30, and then life will go on from there. I’m past 30 now and have done none of that, but my life is great. I couldn’t have imagined the life I have right now from just-graduated me.
Also when I graduated from college, I started traveling more and I was extremely planned in my travels. I planned every day down to the hour, figured out transit from each place, and even figured out what I wanted to eat at which restaurant. Once I left home for my trip, I would execute the schedule and that’s what my trip would be.
While that meant I knew exactly what I was doing every day and no moment was wasted, there were also moments when I felt like I wanted to do something else, like hang out with people I met on a free walking tour or hostel. But if I did, I wouldn’t get to do what I had already planned, and since my schedule was tight, there wasn’t any space to go to those places later. No time to do anything unplanned.
Missing opportunities to hang out with people didn’t bother me too much, because at that time, I wasn’t meeting people very often anyway. What did bother me was events out of my control, like canceled trains or delayed flights. One particular instance stuck in my mind: the train I booked was canceled due to an accident and as the last train of the day, I had to wait until the next day to reach my next destination. Where I had planned for a day suddenly decreased to just a few hours, and I happened to quite enjoy this location. But again, due to my tight scheduling, there was no wiggle-room, no chance of replanning, and I have always felt the need to return to really do what I wanted to do there.
Along with an increase in travel was also an increase of experience in my career. Funnily enough, my career was never an aspect of life I wanted to plan, mostly because I didn’t know what I wanted to do in the long-run. I just knew I wanted to do work that I enjoyed, whatever that might be.
All of these examples above are why I don’t think setting goals and planning is necessary. Life has plans for you, and if I seek out opportunities I want — whether in career, lifestyle, people, hobbies, and anything really, that’s the life I want to live. I don’t need to be tunnel-visioned into getting what I think I want, because I might not know all that’s out there, all the choices I have. I have the choices I have because of my current perspectives, beliefs, and exposure to the world, but as I widen my world, those choices become wider. My world gets bigger.
I recently had a conversation where we discussed being adaptable and flexible to situations (because they’re outside our control) is actually a great skill. Planning does too, although I think the challenge in that is execution and reaching the goal, not just writing down a plan. Anyway, an example of adaptability is the pandemic; nobody saw it coming, but those who were flexible were able to thrive and those who weren’t, well, weren’t. Of course, I do want to acknowledge that socio-economic differences and those who were more heavily impacted by the pandemic (specifically black and Hispanic people in the US ) might impact whether being adaptable is even possible.
I understand some people feel anxious without a plan, and perhaps the answer is balance, as always. This behavior can be changed, because in the past, I was much more comfortable with a plan as well. Be in enough situations outside of your control or consciously practice letting some of that control go, and suddenly, the plan doesn’t seem to be so important. Be open to change, look for those opportunities, but most importantly, be willing to actually make that change. Use plans as a guideline, not permanently written down to be followed.
