Viewed from the perspective of an HSP, planning has never interfered with or prevented action but is simply its wise precursor.
"From an evolutionary perspective, being highly sensitive has its advantages. Historically, individuals with Sensory Processing Sensitivity may have acted as the tribe’s “early warning system,” detecting subtle signs of danger before others. These heightened perceptual abilities could have been crucial in survival scenarios, allowing for early detection of predators or changes in the environment. It seems likely that a balanced mix of highly sensitive and less sensitive individuals would be most beneficial for a group’s survival. Highly sensitive individuals could pick up on subtle changes and threats, while less sensitive individuals could undertake riskier tasks without becoming overwhelmed."
Distributed cognition. This is why it’s important to develop actual (in the flesh) community, and why that community must be tolerant of different-think.
As a person who loves to plan, often at the expense of doing, I am more and more convinced of the ‘you can just do stuff’ approach. My proclivities toward analysis are always operant while I’m willfully choosing to act, which I’ve found makes for more than tolerable results in the end. Measure twice, cut once; but be sure to make the cut.
I think the goal for those prone to overplanning is to develop the notion of preparation in stead of planning, and the cultivation of adapting as you go. Explicitly focusing on these two things as skills to develop, preparing and adapting. That's what I try to do. You know, gaslight yourself, lol.
Speaking as a teacher, learning by doing is a good method that's been bastardised into "let the kids decide for themselves what they're to be doing". When done right it is of course much different:
The one who knows, shows the student.
The student tries it himself.
The teacher corrects, advises and as needed shows again.
The student tries repeatedly, with the teacher noting what needs improving.
The student keeps repeating until task is mastered.
Those five lines, which can be further simplified, is the sum total of the field of pedagogy, but since such simplicity and clarity makes for poor business models, it needs clouding and swaddling into tens of thousands of pages of hypoteses and theories.
Another thing to always consider is, what the brain does it gets better at doing until the doing becomes second nature. Thus, if you're allowed as a child to procrastinate, rationalise your way out of things and to postpone or be delinquent without unpleasant cost and consewuence, you get very good at not doing things/having to do things.
Which very bad for you as an adult, but by then you perceive things as natural, despite feeling forlorn, depressed and alienated without really understanding why.
Not doing something must always be a conscious choice, made with full understanding of the cost, instead of an automatic or autonomous rote response.
I could go for days repeating platitudes, because this *thing* you've written about is so simple it takes a lot of words to nail it down.
Yes I agree. Doing works. It assists in learning much faster than theory alone. But as you note there is more to it than that. In a teaching environment the benefit is the greater knowledge of the teacher, so he can guide the doing. But the non-teaching version works too. You do and life provides feedback.
The problem many have is the appeal of planning, which feels productive. It can take on a life of its own. And some need to be reminded to do.
That is what this Substack actually is. An attempt to make myself ship and deliver, not keep planning, outlining, writing, editing etc etc. I make myself do, which in this little example means publish.
I am much better than I once was and all because I act on the world.
Exactly. They are the screenplay, not the finished movie. Alas some fall in love with screenplays. The formatting, the font, the spacings. Maybe it needs trimmed; maybe it needs more thought etc.
All too easy to destroy a life when it is spent inside a head and not outside being beaten into shape by reality.
This reminds me of the Teddy Roosevelt quote: “It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
It also reminds me the famous George Bernard Shaw adage: "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."
Yes, big success requires acting in the face of uncertainty. But this can also cause big failure. Those who fail don't get profiles in Forbes, and they don't write books about their lessons learned.
Get active in fringe politics and one gets to meet those who leaped before they looked hard enough -- and lost.
Or just read a bunch of "How I Got Rich using Formula X" books. The authors tell the story of going from dumpster diving and giving backrubs to pigs for a living to become rich using Formula X. Tend to downplay how they sunk so low in the first place.
I would add such failure is ultimately more useful than never leaping at all. Full-on, zero impulse control noplanning is not the goal, just an awareness the purpose is always to do. Failure is part of that.
Although I concede the point. We must be wary of the selection bias we inevitably see when the great and the good are interviewed. For them the success is often an obvious series of steps but we don't see the near identical rivals who lost everything.
Love your writings. They always hit home with me! You can tell I am a planner and, correctly, when i wasn’t experiences were great, good ánd bad. So i will try to live up more to your truths❤️
I love this piece it echoes a lot of my own thoughts. I have, "Do it first and feel about it afterwards" as a memo on one of my sites. 'Action first, think less' is the general goal for my days. Rabbit holes are dangerous for me, I love them but one day I think I may never come back out 😅
Sometimes, I get these inexplicable gut feelings—urges to step into something entirely unfamiliar, something I’d never normally do. Fear and imposter syndrome creep in, making me hesitate. So I start small, dipping my toe in just to see what happens. It’s uncomfortable and unsettling. But then I realize this is training ground for a higher purpose. Whether I fail or succeed, the experience itself is shaping me and that takes some of the pressure off.
So much of trying something new is wrapped up in expectation—hoping for a specific outcome or clinging to a fixed idea of who you are. But once I let go of that certainty, I realize I’m just a passenger on a train, watching people come and go—they have nothing to do with me. My job is simply to stay on course without a plan and see where it takes me. The best things unfold naturally—without force or overthinking it.
It is a skill. Resisting the urge to impose an expected outcome. The stupid and the shallow don't have this problem, so they seem to sail through. We all know people who seem fearless to us, but they simply miss all the cues.
But to see the cues, to feel the fear and push through is where the growth is.
I too have suffered from fear an imposter syndrome. Too many times to mention. Lost opportunities, lost jobs, lost people; you name it. A lifetime of avoidance, and all because of an anxiety embedded during childhood that becomes cemented into place by adulthood.
Every day is a battle. You have to keep at it.
And I too have these feelings of going right outside my comfort zone. One of mine is to make films, which I am currently at the very beginning of trying. Crazy, but there you go.
I think the ideal for the doubters is a kind of determined action. Just do it. then move on to the next task. Let the outcome take care of itself.
I agree with you. I strongly believe everyone is capable of greatness—just have to master your internal battles so you can pursue the things you are meant to do with clarity and soul.
Yes, you have to overcome the demons. I have a further view, that it is those who do take on this task that achieve the most. I don't think anything worthwhile in life is easy. I believe those who avoid the inner work don't really have the Right Stuff to take on the big jobs. I think that is why many coast, they are content with very little. They would think us both crazy to write articles here on Substack for no payback. They are incurious about the world and themselves.
So I think angst and discomfort and imposter syndrome are all signs you are actually on a path whereas most people are not.
It could be argued that all our strategies are a means of avoiding our hell-deep fear of death.
It could also be argued that most people do actually live a life of quiet desperation even those with a seemingly happy or successful face.
And as we get older and more and more decrepit just waiting to die.
And perhaps hopefully going to heaven which of course does not happen. In fact sooner or later every one gets reborn again into this nightmare world where death really does rule to here.
I do wonder myself how much distraction is deep avoidance of your observation. We all die. This is it. A seemingly bleak prognosis people cannot face, so they avoid.
But it can also energize I find. So little actually matters in the face of death and the oblivion it brings. You might as well enjoy it and go for it. You can use it to recalibrate, to figure out what actually matters to you.
Money, fame, reknown. It is all a farce. As are perceived slights or insults, setbacks, even calamities. Most external events, especially those promoted by the mainstream, are irrelevant to us.
A year ago I needed a new studio, so I built one with my brother-in-law. Decent carpenters, both of us, but I could have put this off for...oh, another decade at least. “The Wife” would gently remind me of my “plans”. Marriage has its benefits.
That is a fairly drastic solution to a tendency to overplan, having a woman in the house. You clearly like to live dangerously, lol.
But good for you. There is a satisfaction in building that nothing else matches. I feel sorry for the arch-consumers we now see everywhere, lost in their phones and their digital mazes. And I fear the youngest will never have the attention spans to learn hard skills like carpentry, and therefore never experience the joy of making or producing.
Viewed from the perspective of an HSP, planning has never interfered with or prevented action but is simply its wise precursor.
"From an evolutionary perspective, being highly sensitive has its advantages. Historically, individuals with Sensory Processing Sensitivity may have acted as the tribe’s “early warning system,” detecting subtle signs of danger before others. These heightened perceptual abilities could have been crucial in survival scenarios, allowing for early detection of predators or changes in the environment. It seems likely that a balanced mix of highly sensitive and less sensitive individuals would be most beneficial for a group’s survival. Highly sensitive individuals could pick up on subtle changes and threats, while less sensitive individuals could undertake riskier tasks without becoming overwhelmed."
I am all for sensitivity. And I don't advocate no planning. But many of us become lost in the plans when the goal should always be action.
I also feel HSPs are prone to anxiety and let that fear dictate behaviour. This is understandable, but they are more prone to overplanning.
Obviously we need a balance. But the overthinkers need a kick, they need to get moving. I speak from experience, lol.
Distributed cognition. This is why it’s important to develop actual (in the flesh) community, and why that community must be tolerant of different-think.
Yes this helps too. A mixture of skills and temperaments especially. The impulsive alongside the plodders.
As a person who loves to plan, often at the expense of doing, I am more and more convinced of the ‘you can just do stuff’ approach. My proclivities toward analysis are always operant while I’m willfully choosing to act, which I’ve found makes for more than tolerable results in the end. Measure twice, cut once; but be sure to make the cut.
In some areas you must plan. In others less so.
I think the goal for those prone to overplanning is to develop the notion of preparation in stead of planning, and the cultivation of adapting as you go. Explicitly focusing on these two things as skills to develop, preparing and adapting. That's what I try to do. You know, gaslight yourself, lol.
Fake it till you make it.
Words to live by.
Speaking as a teacher, learning by doing is a good method that's been bastardised into "let the kids decide for themselves what they're to be doing". When done right it is of course much different:
The one who knows, shows the student.
The student tries it himself.
The teacher corrects, advises and as needed shows again.
The student tries repeatedly, with the teacher noting what needs improving.
The student keeps repeating until task is mastered.
Those five lines, which can be further simplified, is the sum total of the field of pedagogy, but since such simplicity and clarity makes for poor business models, it needs clouding and swaddling into tens of thousands of pages of hypoteses and theories.
Another thing to always consider is, what the brain does it gets better at doing until the doing becomes second nature. Thus, if you're allowed as a child to procrastinate, rationalise your way out of things and to postpone or be delinquent without unpleasant cost and consewuence, you get very good at not doing things/having to do things.
Which very bad for you as an adult, but by then you perceive things as natural, despite feeling forlorn, depressed and alienated without really understanding why.
Not doing something must always be a conscious choice, made with full understanding of the cost, instead of an automatic or autonomous rote response.
I could go for days repeating platitudes, because this *thing* you've written about is so simple it takes a lot of words to nail it down.
Yes I agree. Doing works. It assists in learning much faster than theory alone. But as you note there is more to it than that. In a teaching environment the benefit is the greater knowledge of the teacher, so he can guide the doing. But the non-teaching version works too. You do and life provides feedback.
The problem many have is the appeal of planning, which feels productive. It can take on a life of its own. And some need to be reminded to do.
That is what this Substack actually is. An attempt to make myself ship and deliver, not keep planning, outlining, writing, editing etc etc. I make myself do, which in this little example means publish.
I am much better than I once was and all because I act on the world.
DesCartes caused a lot of problems when he ended his little experiment in extreme skepticism with "I think, therefore I am."
He should have ended, "I act, therefore I am." Or, even better, "I will, therefore I am."
Thoughts only become real when actualized in the real world through willed action.
Exactly. They are the screenplay, not the finished movie. Alas some fall in love with screenplays. The formatting, the font, the spacings. Maybe it needs trimmed; maybe it needs more thought etc.
All too easy to destroy a life when it is spent inside a head and not outside being beaten into shape by reality.
This reminds me of the Teddy Roosevelt quote: “It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
It also reminds me the famous George Bernard Shaw adage: "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."
Careful! Selection bias alert!
Yes, big success requires acting in the face of uncertainty. But this can also cause big failure. Those who fail don't get profiles in Forbes, and they don't write books about their lessons learned.
Get active in fringe politics and one gets to meet those who leaped before they looked hard enough -- and lost.
Or just read a bunch of "How I Got Rich using Formula X" books. The authors tell the story of going from dumpster diving and giving backrubs to pigs for a living to become rich using Formula X. Tend to downplay how they sunk so low in the first place.
I would add such failure is ultimately more useful than never leaping at all. Full-on, zero impulse control noplanning is not the goal, just an awareness the purpose is always to do. Failure is part of that.
Although I concede the point. We must be wary of the selection bias we inevitably see when the great and the good are interviewed. For them the success is often an obvious series of steps but we don't see the near identical rivals who lost everything.
Had I followed a more conventional career path and did the boring financial moves, I would be comfortably retired now instead of broke.
Richard Branson can be brash because his cost of capital is effectively negative, and he has brainiac staffers to do the planning and risk analysis.
Convention is for the sheep. Remember, life must be a daring adventure or it is nothing...
I will take this idea under advisement.🤔
Nother banger, SS. Keep them coming!
That's the idea.
Love your writings. They always hit home with me! You can tell I am a planner and, correctly, when i wasn’t experiences were great, good ánd bad. So i will try to live up more to your truths❤️
The goal is not zero planning. It is more action. Try to ensure the plan is appropriate and not the main activity. That's all.
I love this piece it echoes a lot of my own thoughts. I have, "Do it first and feel about it afterwards" as a memo on one of my sites. 'Action first, think less' is the general goal for my days. Rabbit holes are dangerous for me, I love them but one day I think I may never come back out 😅
I think we must be kindred spirits then. Overplanning is a constant bane. The only antidote is doing.
Sometimes, I get these inexplicable gut feelings—urges to step into something entirely unfamiliar, something I’d never normally do. Fear and imposter syndrome creep in, making me hesitate. So I start small, dipping my toe in just to see what happens. It’s uncomfortable and unsettling. But then I realize this is training ground for a higher purpose. Whether I fail or succeed, the experience itself is shaping me and that takes some of the pressure off.
So much of trying something new is wrapped up in expectation—hoping for a specific outcome or clinging to a fixed idea of who you are. But once I let go of that certainty, I realize I’m just a passenger on a train, watching people come and go—they have nothing to do with me. My job is simply to stay on course without a plan and see where it takes me. The best things unfold naturally—without force or overthinking it.
It is a skill. Resisting the urge to impose an expected outcome. The stupid and the shallow don't have this problem, so they seem to sail through. We all know people who seem fearless to us, but they simply miss all the cues.
But to see the cues, to feel the fear and push through is where the growth is.
I too have suffered from fear an imposter syndrome. Too many times to mention. Lost opportunities, lost jobs, lost people; you name it. A lifetime of avoidance, and all because of an anxiety embedded during childhood that becomes cemented into place by adulthood.
Every day is a battle. You have to keep at it.
And I too have these feelings of going right outside my comfort zone. One of mine is to make films, which I am currently at the very beginning of trying. Crazy, but there you go.
I think the ideal for the doubters is a kind of determined action. Just do it. then move on to the next task. Let the outcome take care of itself.
I agree with you. I strongly believe everyone is capable of greatness—just have to master your internal battles so you can pursue the things you are meant to do with clarity and soul.
Yes, you have to overcome the demons. I have a further view, that it is those who do take on this task that achieve the most. I don't think anything worthwhile in life is easy. I believe those who avoid the inner work don't really have the Right Stuff to take on the big jobs. I think that is why many coast, they are content with very little. They would think us both crazy to write articles here on Substack for no payback. They are incurious about the world and themselves.
So I think angst and discomfort and imposter syndrome are all signs you are actually on a path whereas most people are not.
Very true. Thank you for being a rare breed. 🫡
Takes one to know one and all that.
It could be argued that all our strategies are a means of avoiding our hell-deep fear of death.
It could also be argued that most people do actually live a life of quiet desperation even those with a seemingly happy or successful face.
And as we get older and more and more decrepit just waiting to die.
And perhaps hopefully going to heaven which of course does not happen. In fact sooner or later every one gets reborn again into this nightmare world where death really does rule to here.
I do wonder myself how much distraction is deep avoidance of your observation. We all die. This is it. A seemingly bleak prognosis people cannot face, so they avoid.
But it can also energize I find. So little actually matters in the face of death and the oblivion it brings. You might as well enjoy it and go for it. You can use it to recalibrate, to figure out what actually matters to you.
Money, fame, reknown. It is all a farce. As are perceived slights or insults, setbacks, even calamities. Most external events, especially those promoted by the mainstream, are irrelevant to us.
A year ago I needed a new studio, so I built one with my brother-in-law. Decent carpenters, both of us, but I could have put this off for...oh, another decade at least. “The Wife” would gently remind me of my “plans”. Marriage has its benefits.
That is a fairly drastic solution to a tendency to overplan, having a woman in the house. You clearly like to live dangerously, lol.
But good for you. There is a satisfaction in building that nothing else matches. I feel sorry for the arch-consumers we now see everywhere, lost in their phones and their digital mazes. And I fear the youngest will never have the attention spans to learn hard skills like carpentry, and therefore never experience the joy of making or producing.
“Their hesitation is fear; fear of failure, fear of making a fool of themselves, fear of it not quite being perfect.”
That’s me alright. 😔
That is a lot of people. Including me.
How do you deal with it?