The best plan

I’ve been packing up my house over the last few weeks.

At first, it was intimidating to look at everything and wonder to myself: “how is this going to get done?”

At first I tried to make a plan of what to pack, when to pack it, and how to pack it. Ironically, the thought of mapping out such plan was so daunting that I ended up procrastinating for a couple of weeks.

In the end it wasn’t an a elaborate plan that got me through the packing process, it was the absence of it one. It was waking up one Saturday morning, walking towards the nearest thing that needed to be packed, finding a box for it, and repeating that process. And sure enough within a couple of weekends everything was packed.

This feels like a common experience when faced with a challenge: a very reasonable and rationale side of us insists on making a plan on how we’ll solve the problem first — this may be the right call in some situations. Other times, I would argue more often than not, we would be better off just working away at the most salient parts of the problem — allowing ourselves to be naturally guided from one part of the problem to the next.

The best plan isn’t the most comprehensive or seemingly well-thought-out one; it’s the one that gets you off your feet and started.