Why Planning Becomes Another Form of Procrastination

 A note on how our minds trick us and how planning made my life more chaotic than organized. 

I have had those phases in my life- the random bursts of motivation where I would go and buy myself a new journal, label it as timetable, write "Day 1" on the first page. I have always been one of those people who work well when they romanticize their lives. That cup of chai. The melodramatic bollywood songs on a car ride back home. And of course, aesthetic journals and colourful pens and a neat schedule of how my day should look like. 

They don't last, unfortunately. 

The people who idealize the world can rarely stick to those ideals themselves.

It took me some time to realize this. Success does not consist of drawing neat little lines on journals and planning for days ahead. This is what people will try to tell you. This is what they try to sell. Plan your day. Have a list of tasks. Make a timetable, stick it next to your desk. 

Been there, done that. Does it work? I can't say for everyone. But it didn't for me. The funny thing is, I realized that planning was actually making my procrastination worse. The only thing that was different was that I was aware. I was aware of my procrastination, of all the hours I spent doom-scrolling or just doing absolutely nothing. And the more aware you are, the more harder your guilt hits. Planning my day was just making my life more miserable. So, I stopped. 

I haven't planned a day in months. And now, looking back, I'm actually amazed at how far I have come. Yes, I have procrastinated. But I have also done work. I have joined a martial arts class. I am learning (or trying to learn) the piano. I have a decent cgpa. I spend time with my friends. Things are not as bad as they seem to be. 

It got me thinking: maybe, just maybe, I wasn't the problem. Maybe the problem (as non-intuitive it sounds) was planning. Planning my day. My week. My life. 

After some research, I realized that planning can become another form of procrastination. 

My arguments can be broadly classified in two parts: one is neuroscientific and the other takes a more philosophical approach. 

The first argument: According to neuroscience, planning your day releases dopamine in your brain. The most common misconception is that dopamine is a reward hormone. It is not. It is the hormone of "anticipation". So your brain releases dopamine while planning your day because it is anticipating a reward. The reward, in this case, is success. So essentially, by planning, the neurological reward of success is already achieved and that decreases our motivation for doing the actual tasks. 

This leads to an illusion of progress. When we actually start doing the tasks, we eventually realize that progress is slow, and that success is not easy. Hence, the procrastination. 

The second argument is quite simple- our lives, as a whole, are defined more by random, sudden events than planned, organized ones. Both psychologists and biologists have noted that we often overestimate how much control we have over our destinies. Our very existence, as a matter of fact, is a chance event. And while this argument does not imply that planning can be bad, for people like me who like having control, meditating on this really helped me let go of things that no longer served me. 

Does this mean that planning is bad? Not really. It does imply that it's better to have a vague outline of what your goals are rather than detailed ones and then work towards it. Because the more you specify your goals, the harder it becomes to actually follow it through. 

The problem, in my opinion, isn't really planning. It is over-planning. It is making unrealistic schedules and obsessing over it. So if you're anything like me, the best piece of advice I can give you is to stop over-planning and be ready to accept change. Life isn't about perfect schedules. And you will soon enough realize that once you stop obsessing over planning your life, you start living.