Planning Ahead and Self-control

For a long time, I have been adverse to planning ahead, because I felt that it limited the freedom of my future self.  Suppose I planned to do something, but when it came time to do it, I wanted to do something else?  I equated freedom with the ability to be spontaneous and do whatever I thought of at any moment.

I have known for a while that I am biased against planning ahead, because most of the planning ahead I encountered in my life was done to me by authorities, like parents or school, not by myself.  During the summer of 2011 (I think) I tried to get over my bias and schedule myself.  I decided to spend 2 hours on studying each of 5 subjects for a total of 10 hours per day.  It failed miserably.  I got behind, and needed to make up lost time.  I felt like I was moving very slowly, because I advanced at most 2 hours on each subject per day.  I also was trying to get on a polyphasic sleep cycle at the time, of which my parents were very unsupportive (I would miss my naptimes arguing with them about the sleep cycle), and hence my morale was further weakened.  After this experiment I decided that planning ahead and making schedules wasn’t for me, and that the best way to get things done is to just be driven by passion and choose at the moment what thing to do.

Now I am reevaluating this conclusion.  I am realizing that if I make a reasonable plan to do something at a future time, I will want to do it when it comes to be that time.  I won’t feel like doing something else instead.  If I feel like doing something else instead, that is an indication that my plan wasn’t reasonable.

To demonstrate this, let us speak about the enjoyment cycle, in analogy with the sexual response cycle.  The stages of the enjoyment cycle are 1) anticipating the event, 2) enjoying the event itself, 3) enjoying the memory or result of the event.  So our enjoyment of an event is not localized in time to when the event itself takes place, but also occurs before and after the event.  Here is a simple thought experiment to prove this:

“I can give you ultimate enjoyment for a duration of 10 minutes.  It will be the best feeling you have ever experienced in your life.  And I can do this for just $20.  What a great deal!  Here’s the catch:  These 10 minutes could happen at any time, and you’ll have no way of predicting it.  Furthermore, after these 10 minutes have happened, you won’t remember them at all, and they will have no lasting effect.”

Is this service worth $20?  Most people would say no, demonstrating that an event is not really enjoyed if it is only enjoyed when it takes place.  Not just stage 2 of the enjoyment cycle, but also stages 1 and 3 are necessary.

So being spontaneous all the time is not the best way to enjoy life, because it neglects stage 1 of the enjoyment cycle, so spontaneity always gives incomplete enjoyment.

Another experience explained by the enjoyment cycle is the disappointment of anticipating something that doesn’t happen.  If I make plans with someone and they don’t show up, I am disappointed because the enjoyment cycle is cut short after stage 1.  I have trouble doing something else instead of seeing them, because my whole mind was set up to see them and now I have to suddenly change tracks and prepare to do something else, which doesn’t have a stage 1 setup, so to speak.

So a reasonable plan will set in motion stage 1 of the enjoyment cycle: anticipation.  You will anticipate the thing you plan to do, so that when it comes time to do it, you won’t feel like doing something else, but rather you will feel disappointed if you do something else.

An unreasonable plan puts unreasonable demands on the enjoyment cycle.  You might anticipate something impossible, setting yourself up for disappointment.  Or you might misconceive the length of the enjoyment cycle, by planning too far in advance, trying to do an activity that takes too long before it gives a reward, or commencing anticipation for an event too soon before it will actually happen.

Having an unreasonable plan feels horrible.  It feels like you have no control over yourself, because you consistently do something other than what you plan to do.  When your actions don’t correspond to your plan, you feel out-of-control.  There are two ways of fixing this and making your actions correspond to your plan.  You can either bend your actions to the plan, or you can bend the plan to your actions.  Most people do the former way, and don’t ever consider the latter.  For example, suppose someone in school plans to get all their homework done on time, but never does.  Most people in this situation will just resolve to push themselves harder to follow their plan, but nothing will really change significantly.  What about the other option?  Why not change your plan, so that you plan to not get all your homework done on time?  This option might seem crazy, but it is really much more doable than the previous option.  But of course, a plan mustn’t just be negative, it mustn’t just be a plan to not do something, but it must also have a positive component.  So a plan really would be something like “I’ll get these specific homeworks done and not these other ones, and I’ll spend the bulk of my time for the next five days learning Arabic”.

A good plan is a response to what you are already doing, not a fantasy of what you could be doing.  With a good plan, your actions determine the plan.  A bad plan reverses things and tries to determine your actions.

Caution:  I am worried that people will take this the wrong way.  What if you are doing really badly?  Am I saying that you should plan to do just as bad?  No.  You should plan to do better, but in a way that addresses the reasons that you are doing bad.  It should be a plan designed for you, who has certain problems, not a plan for the person you would be if the problems had already been fixed by magic.  Don’t make the error of math teachers who teach based on what their students are supposed to know (i.e. everything in prior math classes) rather than what they actually know.

Grothendieck wrote in his beautiful Recoltes et Semailes (pp. 64-65) about how mathematical objects, just as a good plan, must reflect reality rather than vice versa:

One cannot invent the structure of an object. The most we can do is to patiently bring it to the light of day, with humility – in making it known it is “discovered”. If there is some sort of inventiveness in this work, and if it happens that we find ourselves the maker or indefatigable builder, we aren’t in any sense “making” or “building” these structures. They hardly waited for us to find them in order to exist, exactly as they are! But it is in order to express, as faithfully as possible, the things that we’ve been detecting or discovering, to deliver up that reticent structure, which we can only grasp at, perhaps with a language no better than babbling. Thereby are we constantly driven to invent the language most appropriate to express, with increasing refinement, the intimate structure of the mathematical object, and to “construct” with the help of this language, bit by bit, those “theories” which claim to give a fair account of what has been apprehended and seen. There is a continual coming and going, uninterrupted, between the apprehension of things, and the means of expressing them, by a language in a constant state [of] improvement, and constantly in a process of recreation, under the pressure of immediate necessity.

Likewise, there should be a continual coming and going, uninterrupted, between the doing of things, and the means of expressing what we are doing in the form of a plan.  Our plans are must be in a constant state of improvement, and constantly in a process of recreation, under the pressure of immediate necessity.  The end goal, which we may never reach, is for our plan to conform to our actions perfectly.

Grothendieck continues:

As the reader must have realized by now, these “theories”, “constructed out of whole cloth”, are nothing less than the “stately mansions” treated in previous sections: those which we inherit from our predecessors, and those which we are led to build with our own hands, in response to the way things develop. When I refer to “inventiveness” (or imagination) of the maker and the builder, I am obliged to adjoin to that what really
constitutes it soul or secret nerve. It does not refer in any way to the arrogance of someone who says “This is the way I want things to be!” and ask that they attend him at his leisure, the kind of lousy architect who has all of his plans ready made in his head without having scouted the terrain, investigated the possibilities and all that is required.

In planning ahead, we should make a plan that suits us, not a plan that suits some idealization of ourself.  We shouldn’t say “This is the way I want things to be!” and expect that they will simply happen as such;  we shouldn’t have “all [our] plans ready made in [our] head”, but we should first “investigate the possibilities and all that is required”.

Grothendieck continues:

The sole thing that constitutes the true “inventiveness” and imagination of the researcher is the quality of his attention as he listens to the voices of things. For nothing in the Universe speaks on its own or reveals itself just because someone is listening to it. And the most beautiful mansion, the one that best reflects the love of the true workman, is not the one that is bigger or higher than all the others. The most beautiful mansion is that which is a faithful reflection of the structure and beauty
concealed within things.

(This passage is so beautiful.  I love how Grothendieck talks about “the voices of things”.  This is the humility and serenity of doing mathematics.)

The sole thing that determines our effectiveness at planning ahead is the quality of our attention to ourselves.

Another Caution:  Paying attention to yourself and basing a plan on your nature doesn’t mean defining yourself, saying “I am this type of person and only like x, y, and z, and my favorite color is orange and I can’t do math”.  This is not paying attention to yourself, this is imposing a definition on yourself.  The yourself I am actually talking about has no precise definition, but is constantly changing with infinite flexibility.  It has positive attributes, it is not merely defined by what it isn’t (“I only like x” is actually a negative attribute because it is really saying that you don’t like anything that is not x.  “I like x” would be a positive attribute).  So, when I say to base a plan on your nature, I’m not talking about a false image of your nature, I’m talking about who you actually are.

There is an analogy that I really want to make with Marx’s discussion of democracy in his Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, but this post is long enough already so I’ll make it another time and add a link to it in this sentence.