All this month on the blog I’ve talked about the process I go through at the beginning of each new year, of reflecting on who I am in that moment and the things I value, and of reviewing the events of the previous year in detail so that I know what I want to carry with me into the next one. In this final installment I’m spending a bit of time on the final stage – planning.
Now, before I launch into it I think it’s only fair that I am transparent about my relationship to planning – I don’t really do it. I have fallen out of love with the process of setting goals and planning my time down into smaller and smaller increments. After decades of being the kind of person who planned everything, and sought solace in the control it offered, I came to the realisation that it wasn’t kind to me to do that anymore. So now, instead of inflexible planning, I prefer to think about intentions for the year ahead or setting a direction, loose approaches that keep me focused but allow for a more organic way of working to develop. This method doesn’t suit everyone and I am not here to convince you to stop doing whatever works for you and what feels most natural and true. But it would be wrong of me to talk about planning and not mention my own feelings. It means that you won’t necessarily find any planning tools or structures here, what I am interested in are the ways of planning that are responsive and can adapt to your needs, not a rigid, one-size-fits-all approach that doesn’t work for anyone.
Can we plan anymore?
I’ve been thinking about this idea of ‘how to plan when planning feels impossible’ since March and the first lockdown. At that time I worked with dozens of makers who were struggling due to the massive impact Covid 19 had on their practices. Something that came up with so many people, in different forms, was this notion of ‘what do I do now?’ or ‘how can I keep going?’ when everything was so uncertain. In the following nine months it feels like we have gone through waves of uncertainty, periods of time when things became clearer, when things re-opened and opportunities returned, only to see things retreat again. I have no way of predicting the future, but I suspect that 2021 won’t be much different from 2020 and we will need to adapt to this cycle of being (somewhat) together and then apart.
What I have noticed is that difficulty planning does not mean that it’s impossible to plan. It just means that you may have to reframe your idea of what planning is or looks like. I believe that these times are offering us the opportunity to imagine creative solutions to the boundaries and limits that the world is putting on our practices. We just need to be open to doing things differently and not relying on old ways. Our old ways of planning insisted on viewing the world as fixed, as ‘normal’ and predictable. But we know this isn’t true. Our old ways of planning often gave too much control to external forces – other people’s timetables or agendas – and again, this year we’ve realised how flimsy those were too. If we consider planning as a means of controlling what happens in the year ahead then we do need to think about how much we actually control within our own lives and practices.
What is happening when we plan?
Planning can work in 2 ways:
1. The personal plan (this is self-generated and sits on its own)
2. The holistic plan (this puts the personal plan into the context of the wider world)
In the before times I believe we were doing a hybrid of these. We were thinking about the things we wanted personally, and situating them within the world almost immediately. Or we were responding to what was available or possible in the world and matching our inner desires to those things. But here, in these times of Covid, I think we need to consider them as separate but connected. When things are uncertain, like in lockdown, the personal plan becomes the focus. When things are clearer, the holistic plan can be put into action.
The personal plan
This is the stuff you most want to do, regardless of the state of the world. The things you would find a way to do under any circumstances, or the things you feel drawn to, compelled to do, a deep need to do.
This is also the stuff that is self-generated or -actualised. The nurturing of skills, learning and growth, the space to imagine and play. It is the work that might not have a tangible outcome or audience. It may not lead to new physical outputs or sales. It is about personal and professional development, your ambition for your practice. In many ways this is the only part of planning that you have any control over. No one else is setting these terms for you, no one is demanding that they happen. This is the place to dream and to dare.
The holistic plan
In the before times our personal plans would be integrated with the wider world through things like opportunities and connections. Dreams of shows or exhibitions could come to fruition through awards or open calls, through funding opportunities or collaborations, through networking. New bodies of work might be created by periods of development supported by peers or mentors, workshops or masterclasses, underpinned financially through sales online, in galleries, at shows. It was all interconnected.
The holistic plan is where you connect the things you will do from your personal plan, into the world via the interactions with other people or organisations. It’s a co-dependent space.
Today, things are no longer as stable. We don’t have as many ways of directly interacting with or supporting each other. We can’t rely on the same events or opportunities being there, or being there in the same way. The holistic plan can no longer be fixed, it needs to be fluid.
New planning
We need to accept the current situation and its limits. How we respond to this also affects the ways our plans will unfold. Ways of looking at the situation could be either too optimistic (it will all return to normal soon, it’s going to get better quickly) or too pessimistic (it’s all terrible and nothing is possible). Both absolve us of the responsibility of finding our own ways through this, of looking for opportunity and possibility even in difficult circumstances. If we plan assuming the normal things will still happen we will be thwarted when they don’t. If we assume nothing is possible we will miss those opportunities that are still out there.
Planning, if it’s going to be possible, needs to recognise there are new limits and it needs to respond appropriately to them, asking questions like:
What work is essential? What work can wait?
What work serves me? What doesn’t?
What can I control?
What is there to respond to? What things are still happening?
If other opportunities come up, am I ready?
If these are the limits (at the moment) what can I do to make my work happen?
If nothing seems possible, what can I make possible by/for myself?