The art of being plan less
And how to not panic about it
Coming to Australia is probably the most exiting thing I’ve ever done in my life. Not just because I’m traveling just by myself, finding a job, seeing a new country and doing a lot of things I’ve never done before. It’s because I haven’t really made any detailed plans about it.
All my life I’ve had quite a lot of plans. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think I’m a very organized person. I’m very spontaneous and always do things just on time. But sometimes I can’t sleep at night because I have all the things I need to do on my mind, and then I feel the urge to make plans and to do lists for the next day. And I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep before that. I’d even write them down sometimes, notebooks full of time tables and to do lists.
95% of these plans I never implement. They’re just to stop my anxiety and fear of missing out or not using all the time I have in the best and most effective way. I’m not that kind of person that makes to do list and actually crosses out all the things on the list by the end of the day. I make them just for the sake of making to do lists.
Before I went to Australia I realized that I don’t only hate following plans, I usually don’t really enjoy making them either. It’s such a stressful thing to have all those plans on your mind and it keeps me from doing what I really want to do right at this moment. When I make plans today I never know what I want to do tomorrow, next week or next month. I don’t know about all the new opportunities that might pop up the next day and I’ll miss them because they don’t fit in the plans I already have. Making plans because I’m scared of not using my time efficient enough is probably the most stupid thing ever. Because if you’re good at being plan less, it will probably allow you to use your time a lot better than you could with making plans.
All of those things made me decide that I did not want to make plans for my journey trough Australia. I didn’t have plans coming here, and after more than one week in Australia and almost one month of traveling that still hasn’t really changed.
I still have this urge to plan things sometimes, but then I try to focus on planing just the next day and not more. And even then I try to make sure that I can still change those plans any time if I want to. I still find it hard to fall asleep sometimes because I start doubting that not making plans will really work out. I start being scared again that I won’t have enough time to do everything I want in the end if I don’t plan. Six months seem so long but can be so short. But I try to stick to my plan of not making to many too many plans. Because for the most part, it has brought me the feeling of being free, and that is one of the most amazing feelings ever.
Last week it seemed like I was going to have the opportunity to be an au pair for January and February, and when that came up I started planning my whole time until then. It gave me a stressful time because I didn’t really know what I want untill then and suddenly I was supposed to decide what I want to do for the next 2 or 3 months. Pretty hard for a person like me who hates decisions in general. But just when I had started to like my plan, it turned out that I wouldn’t be able to do that au pair job. I thought I might feel disappointed or nervous about that plan suddenly being destroyed again, but I didn’t. What I really felt was relief. I’m sure that au pair opportunity would have been great and doing it would probably have been a good plan and I would probably have had a great time. But I’m not sad that it didn’t work out. Sometimes plans don’t work out and that’s okay.
Now that I don’t have any plans anymore I feel more free again. I can do whatever I want and I can change my mind every day. Sometimes that’s scary, but most of the time it feels great. I don’t know what I’m doing tomorrow. I just know what I’m doing today. I have no idea how long I’ll stay in Melbourne. Or what I’ll do for Christmas. And I don’t care. Right now, I’m looking for a job. And that’s all I need to know. Until then, I’m free.













