There’s a particular kind of planning that isn’t really about productivity at all.
It happens when you’re unanchored — when the ground feels slippery, or when the people and institutions around you seem blind to your worth. You open a new notebook, label a fresh spreadsheet, maybe even buy a new pen. You tell yourself you’re getting organized. But really, you’re trying to restore a sense of control over a life that suddenly feels unpredictable.
For me, it always starts with a spreadsheet.
The more uncertain I feel, the more columns appear — colour-coded, cross-referenced, deeply soothing. The plan becomes my scaffolding. If I can’t rely on others to recognize my value, at least I can rely on formulas.
The irony, of course, is that over-planning is just a quieter form of panic. It’s the Type A version of crying in the shower. We call it “structure,” but what we really mean is containment.
I learned this the hard way after one of those bruising professional disappointments — the kind that shouldn’t matter but somehow does. The kind where you realize that being good isn’t always enough to be seen.
That night, instead of feeling the sting, I did what I always do: I started building a plan. A six-month roadmap, complete with milestones, dates, and performance metrics — all to outrun the ache of not feeling valued.
It worked for about twelve hours. Then I woke up exhausted, staring at a grid that looked less like progress and more like a cage.
Here’s what I’ve come to understand: when we feel powerless, we crave certainty, and planning feels like certainty. But it’s not. It’s choreography — a set of steps meant to keep us from tripping over our own doubt.
What actually grounds us isn’t structure. It’s meaning.
It’s reminding ourselves why we care in the first place. It’s remembering that our worth was never meant to be delegated to a committee or confirmed by a calendar invite.
Sometimes, when you’re unanchored, the real work isn’t to plan harder — it’s to stop. To breathe. To notice that the discomfort isn’t chaos; it’s space.
Space for something new to form, for a different kind of direction to reveal itself.
The truth is, life doesn’t always reward order. The most alive moments — the ones that shift our course entirely — usually happen in the unplanned spaces.
The unscheduled walk. The conversation you weren’t supposed to have. The quiet morning when you finally stop forcing a timeline and realize the path has been moving under you all along.
So these days, when I feel that old pull — the itch to tidy my uncertainty into plans — I try to pause. I ask myself, what am I really trying to control here?
If the answer is fear, I close the notebook.
If it’s hope, I keep writing.
Because the goal isn’t to plan your way out of uncertainty. It’s to stay present long enough to realize that uncertainty was never the enemy. It was the invitation.