TLDR: Imperfect action is better than perfect planning because action gives you information you can use to refine your systems.
CAVEAT: If you’re like me, you like planning more than acting. Planning feels safe because it’s all in your head; action means finding out what happens in real life. But eventually, you have to let reality give you information.
(As always, find your next step at the end!)
Last week I wrote a lengthy post about meal planning. And wow, did I enjoy getting deep into the details of planning, thinking about planning, and planning to think about planning!
Thinking, planning, and generally living inside my head all feel really natural and therefore comfortable to me.
And then I went to cook dinner.
Getting started was easy, because I had my written meal plan to refer to. But when I began pulling out my ingredients, I discovered something:
A major flaw in my Meal Planning System.
When I looked in the fridge, several things had gone bad, resulting in food waste and an unplanned takeout meal—what a shame! Especially since a big part of the reason that I implemented a meal planning system is to save money.
Does that mean that my system failed?
Does my system failing mean … I’m a failure?
I don’t know what it was that allowed me to suddenly see an established way of doing things with fresh eyes. Maybe it was being able to share my ideas with new people (aka, you). But I do know what I had at that moment.
I had two choices.
I could look at the spoiled food (and takeout bill) and decide that my system was worthless, broken, and a negative reflection of my moral character.
Or, I could decide to look at it like this:
A flaw in my system gives me an opportunity for refinement.
When you look at “failures” as useful information instead of using them to critique yourself, you open up a world of opportunities.
Getting stuck thinking that your systems are meant to be created and then performed perfectly every time, is setting yourself up to feel defeated when reality creeps into your plans.
It’s setting yourself up to be a system performer instead of a real human being living a real life.
It also makes Becoming More next to impossible. Because ‘Becoming More’ is about allowing yourself opportunities for growth. And growth comes through taking information and learning from it, without constantly judging yourself.
Becoming More is an inside job.
I’ve learned that self-judgment is a very unproductive emotion. Don’t take this to mean I don’t still judge myself—I do (I’ll resist a joke about starting an I’m-my-own-worst-critic support group).
But I have also learned to move myself past the self-judgment phase by focusing on the information analysis phase.
Take my meal planning “failure” for example. In all honesty, my gut reaction was But I had a perfect system.
A little embarrassing to admit my perfectionism.
But when I pushed myself into the information analysis phase, I was able to ask a different question:
Why did this happen?
As soon as I reframed my question, I could see my ‘failure’ as ‘failure feedback’.
I could see that food had spoiled because there was too much other food visually blocking it. So I hadn’t assessed freshness/usability during my Sunday meal planning. Going a little deeper, I could admit that I probably hadn’t even specifically checked these ingredients because I get instantly stressed by visual clutter (and since the fridge is ‘my domain’ there was no external person to blame for this … but that’s another post for another day!)
When taken together, my information told me something specific: I was keeping way too much inventory for my current situation. That was my opportunity to refine my system.
Systems are meant to evolve, and evolution happens through little refinements over time. So take your perceived failures as the opportunities that they are.
Because systems are also meant to be supportive, to be the ‘scaffolding’ to your life. When you have a strong structure to lean on, you can more easily call upon the flexibility that will inevitably be demanded of you. And flexibility is one of your most useful tools.
Flexibility is what makes consistency possible.
This was a hard one for me. Part of my attraction to systems is the idea that they set things up and require less personal flexibility from me. Maybe this is you, too. If so, try thinking of it this way:
Flexibility isn’t a personality trait. It’s a functional requirement.
Let’s remember our goal—to have systems that make our lives require less management. And the only way to achieve this calmer state of being, is to achieve consistency in areas that make us not calm when they require constant management.
Going back to my meal planning example, the flexibility wasn’t in agreeing to get takeout (although it might have been for the me of my youth, who literally would’ve gone hungry before submitting to a change in plans).
The flexibility was in my willingness to objectively assess my system, plan for the next round of changes, and get back on the horse the next day.
If you’re into numbers, know that this kind of flexibility increases your overall “success rate.” And even if you’re not, know something much more important:
Trying again after “failure” is what rewires your brain.
So if you’ve ever had thoughts like, “I can’t be organized, I’m just not that type of person” … don’t worry. You don’t need to change the person you are. You just need to let your brain rewire itself into the person you want to be.
I hope that this week, while you’re interacting with your systems in real time, you’ll remember this: A good system is one that works. A great system is a good system that gets refined through feedback.
And no system should hold the power to make you feel like a failure.
HERE’S YOUR NEXT STEP:
Pick one thing in your life that makes you feel like less than a success (meal planning?) and move yourself into the information analysis phase.
P.S. My meal planning system is now for sale. You can check it out by visiting The MTO Store