Plan for the Life, Not Just the Work
Maybe the most important thing you can put in next year’s plan is a stopping point.
Years ago, in a sociology class, a professor told us about Indigenous people of the North American plains. The detail I carried away, whether I remember every anthropological detail correctly or not, was this: when maintaining life began taking too much of the day, they moved.
I don't remember what was on the exam. Probably something with three acceptable answers and one designed by Satan.
But I remembered that.
They moved.
They did not hold an all-hands meeting about increasing buffalo productivity. Nobody suggested waking at 4:30. There was no podcast called Grinding Through the Plains.
The arrangement was no longer working.
So they changed the arrangement.
I have been thinking about that lately.
Maybe four hours is enough
Not four hours of life. Four hours of the machinery.
The things that keep the lights on, the roof attached, the refrigerator humming and the bank from sending increasingly personal letters.
Could you do the necessary part of your day in four hours?
Not because four is sacred. Five may be your number. Three would be interesting. Seven happens.
The point is that almost nobody asks.
We generally begin with the opposite assumption: there is a day. Fill it. Then buy a calendar with smaller squares.
If you work in an office, four hours does not have to mean arriving at eight and climbing out a bathroom window at noon. Maybe it means four real one-hour sessions spread through the day. Door metaphorically closed. Phone upside down. Browser tabs reduced from thirty-seven to something a mammal could reasonably comprehend.
You work.
Then you stop working.
This second part has become strangely advanced.
The rest of the day can contain all the things we quietly removed from the definition of a productive adult: lunch, a walk, a conversation with someone who does not need anything from you, ten minutes of meditation, reading, learning, helping someone younger, being helped by someone older, looking through a window.
Occasionally noticing there is weather.
These things look suspicious when viewed through the little green dot on Teams.
But human beings have been doing them for quite a while.
The chair is not the job
Somewhere along the way we began confusing presence with production. The office chair became a kind of livestock tag.
Still here.
Still good.
Still facing the screen.
China gave the extreme version a convenient number: 996. Nine to nine. Six days a week. Seventy-two hours.
Which is a remarkable amount of time to spend proving you are serious.
But you don't need to work in a 996 company to build one yourself. Plenty of us have constructed a small private factory in the head.
The building closes.
The factory stays open.
At dinner it processes an email. In the shower it replays a meeting. At two in the morning it holds an unscheduled board meeting about something somebody said Tuesday.
The employee and management are both exhausted.
Unfortunately they are also the same person.
You can start before you escape
This matters if you are currently living something close to 996.
Maybe you cannot change the schedule yet. Maybe you need the job. Maybe the mortgage has opinions. Maybe your children have developed an expensive habit of eating every day.
Fine.
The experiment can still begin.
You can start discovering your actual rhythm before circumstances give you permission to live by it.
Maybe four hours contain the real work. Maybe another hour belongs to learning. Maybe lunch becomes lunch again instead of a keyboard wearing crumbs. Maybe twenty minutes belong to walking around the block.
Maybe one conversation gets to remain a conversation instead of becoming networking.
These are small things.
But small things are how a life starts escaping before the person does.
Sometimes freedom begins before the circumstances change.
First you stop believing the current arrangement is the only arrangement available.
Then one day a door opens.
And you recognize it.
Summer was evidence
That is really what this whole summer season has been about.
Not vacation.
Evidence.
We stopped keeping score. We tried things we weren't good at. We got into the water. We invited people before the chairs matched. We let somebody else choose. We made small occasions out of ordinary days. We remembered friends without requiring a reason important enough for stationery.
None of this looked particularly strategic.
That was the strategy.
Summer was quietly collecting data while we were busy thinking we were having fun.
This person makes time feel wider.
That activity makes Tuesday better.
This place settles something in me.
That obligation looks important from across the room but becomes ridiculous when I pick it up.
The dogs, incidentally, have understood all of this from the beginning.
They do not have five-year plans. They wake up already fully committed to the morning.
Breakfast. Inspection of property. Unnecessary announcement regarding bird. Nap. Perhaps some wrestling. Another inspection.
They have not monetized any of it.
This troubles me professionally.
Life is happening for you
There is a phrase that normally makes me reach for the nearest exit:
Life is happening for you, not to you.
It has dangerous proximity to scented candles.
Still.
There is something in it.
Not everything happens for a reason. Some things are just awful. Some doors close because somebody closed the door. Some years arrive with a tire iron.
I don't need the universe to be a concierge.
But I do think life is constantly giving us information.
Exhaustion is information.
Delight is information.
Resentment is information.
Curiosity is information.
The friend whose name keeps floating through your mind while washing dishes is information. The thing you keep postponing because it has no obvious return on investment may also be information.
The question is whether you have enough unoccupied space to notice any of it.
This is probably the closest I come to believing in manifestation.
Not sitting on the sofa ordering a yacht from the cosmos.
Attention. Space. Choice. Repetition.
Then one afternoon you notice a door.
It appears to have opened magically.
Except there are fingerprints all over the handle.
And it has been there for years.
You finally had enough room to see it.
Busy is a poor survival strategy
We are heading into uncertain times. This normally causes people to tighten everything.
Work harder. Watch more news. Refresh the account. Buy batteries. Develop strong opinions about canned beans.
Some preparation is sensible.
But fear is a terrible project manager.
It never says enough.
It just moves the deadline.
There is always another thing to protect against. Another amount to save. Another credential. Another client. Another article about the twelve habits of people who apparently never sit quietly on porches.
Eventually you have built such an impressive defense against life that life can no longer get in.
Maybe resilience is knowing how much of your life must be spent maintaining the machinery.
And knowing when the machinery has had enough.
Enough is a real number
That may be the word I want to carry into fall.
Enough.
Not as surrender.
As information.
Enough money. Enough work. Enough house. Enough exercise. Enough preparation. Enough improvement. Enough worrying about whether you are doing enough.
If you never define it, the world is delighted to define it for you.
The world has brochures.
Premium packages.
Upgrades.
An annual subscription.
There is probably an app that will measure your relaxation and send a notification if you relax incorrectly.
At some point you have to decide what sufficient means.
Otherwise more becomes the default setting.
And more is remarkably bad at knowing when to go home.
Planning Season
So before we make plans for next year, maybe we should ask a different question.
Not:
What can I accomplish?
We already know how to ask that. We have spreadsheets.
Instead:
What kind of world do I actually want to live in?
Not someday.
Tuesday.
What does Tuesday look like?
Who is there? How much work is enough? Do you eat lunch sitting down? Does anyone know where you are without checking your calendar? Is there something you do badly simply because you like doing it?
Do people occasionally arrive at your house without requiring a committee meeting?
Is there an afternoon with nothing nailed to it?
Can the dog get a decent scratch behind the ears without having to submit a ticket?
These seem like small planning questions.
I increasingly suspect they are the big ones.
Because the future rarely arrives looking like a future.
It arrives looking like another Tuesday.
The four-hour test
So that is the experiment.
Try four.
Four hours of real effort. Maybe in one block. Maybe scattered across an office day. Maybe your life makes four impossible right now.
That's useful information too.
Don't turn this into another thing to fail at.
We already have enough of those.
Just notice.
What actually requires your attention? What expands because no boundary has ever been placed around it? What are you doing because it matters? What are you doing because everyone can see you doing it?
And then the more uncomfortable question:
What would happen if the important work got done and you considered yourself finished?
That question can make people nervous.
Good.
There may be something behind the nervousness.
Don't carry the prison through the door
Eventually circumstances do change.
The children grow. The mortgage shrinks. The career turns. The business matures. The house gets finished enough that even you have to admit it is technically a house.
An opportunity appears.
A door opens.
And people who have spent twenty years practicing busyness sometimes walk straight through carrying the old schedule under one arm.
Nobody is demanding twelve-hour days anymore.
But twelve-hour days are what they know.
The guard has gone home.
The gate is open.
They keep pacing the yard.
That is why you practice now.
Not to become lazy.
To become ready.
Ready for a little sovereignty. Ready to recognize enough. Ready to inhabit the life you spent all those years constructing.
Look around
That is where summer leaves us.
We spent a season remembering that life is not the prize waiting at the end of improvement.
Life is the thing wandering around while we improve.
It is making coffee. Calling from another continent. Dropping a tennis ball at your feet. Waiting at the table. Growing behind the house. Getting older. Opening doors. Closing others.
Asking whether you are coming.
Fall will be more deliberate.
We will plan. Prune. Choose. Prepare.
But before any of that, I want you to look around.
What worked?
What mattered?
What gave life back?
What am I carrying simply because I forgot I could put it down?
And perhaps the most useful question of all:
If my plan works perfectly, do I actually want to live inside it?
That is manifestation enough for me.
Notice the life.
Make some room.
Choose what belongs.
Build gently around it.
Then keep your eyes open.
Some of the doors you have been waiting for may already be open.
You were just working too much to notice.
Know what enough is.
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