Suyin Aerts
August 30, 2019

Chef Planning

That is what my partner tells friends that want to pick a date to meet up: "call the chef planning", and that chef is me. Can I not live without a plan, can I not present an event and moderate a debate without a plan, can I not film an episode without being prepared and prepare my guests?

Yes I could, however having a plan and being prepared makes going with the flow even more valuable in my opinion. Having plans and goals is a way of charting a course to your true north. It’s a way to make sure you are living according to your values and using your time wisely.

But do not get me wrong : I highly value spontaneity. To a large extent, spontaneity is the truest expression of one of one of my core values: freedom.

So how do I reconcile the desire to plan with the desire to preserve spontaneity?

The reason that the plan is valuable is because it frees you from the tyranny of the moment. While I agree that we want to live in the moment, we need to employ enough restraint to make sure we are living within our values. If we gave in to every impulse, we would end up somewhere we didn’t want to go. You always have the ability to choose. Always. It’s the one thing that can’t be taken away from you.

So we are perfectly free to change our plans, they are our plans after all. But the consistent execution of wide plans in a way improve your options.

If you seize on an unexpected opportunity when you had nothing better to do, that was just common sense.

When you change a well-thought out plan to seize on an unexpected opportunity, that has significance. That’s true control over the course of your life.

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