I’ve been wondering how much our lives actually align with our plan for our lives. This question is relevant for both big things and little things.
The big things include stuff like “I am going to be married by the time I’m thirty”, or “I am going to get that Ph.D. I’ve been talking about!” Little things might include stuff like “I’m really going to clean out my closet by the end of this year.”
I suspect that when our life deviates from what we planned for it, selective amnesia can set in. We don’t like to think about the things we didn’t end up doing. After all, those things did not actually happen.
Would we be happier, in the long run, if we knew that there was going to be some kind of reckoning? What if we knew, when we made our plans, that we were going to be confronted with any difference between what we said and what we did?
Would that just cause anxiety, because every decision would take on greater weight? Or would it make us happier, because we’d be more likely to actually achieve our goals?
I have no idea what the answer is. But I’ve been wondering about it.
David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” advocates keeping lists for everything, promising a feeling of freedom. In that system a Day of Reckoning happens once a week.
Awesome, thanks!
I need to put reading that book on my list.