Pivvvott!

How adapting a philosophy of pivoting calms my days

I am a planner. I plan out meals and workouts for the week, look at my day as a game of tetris to fit all the things in, and always look forward to the next book on my TBR. As any planner will tell you, planning is great, until a plan falls through or plans change unexpectedly. I used to be quite crestfallen when my well-laid plans were abandoned through no fault of my own, but in the past 2 years, this is an area I have realized I needed a change and have really grown in.

Photo by Hope House Press - Leather Diary Studio on Unsplash

Being a more black/white thinker, I can often get myself ‘stuck’ in a thought pattern or thinking something has to be a specific way. I think that is why in the past it has been difficult for me to deal with changing plans. Instead of thinking about what I can do next, I get stuck and cannot move forward or backward. It is almost like a feeling of decision paralysis where no decision seems right because it is not what was originally planned and that original plan was the ‘right’ decision.

A good example of this is when I plan meals for the week. I plan what we will eat on Friday for the upcoming week and I plan based on the availability of my husband and I having time to make a meal (we each take a meal or two to make a week). When events are canceled or moved I have a moment of thinking paralysis as I try to jenga the rest of the week’s meals in a way that we are still fed and that optimizes who is making what meal. Even if events shifting is not my fault, if I cannot figure out how to make our meals work in an ideal way I feel a sense of disappointment in myself and frustration in the plan I had being changed.

I am a longtime fan of Kendra Adachi who is all about being a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that do not matter. A few years back she encouraged so many of us type A people by asserting that “Plans are intentions, not pass/fail.” I resonated with that framing so much as I view plans working/not working as a commendation of myself as a person and my ability to plan. My planning pain points are most often due to me having an ‘ideal’ view of how things should go. Every time plans would change I would feel stuck, diminished, and unsure of what to do next. Reframing my mindset with the goal of looking at plans as intentions and pivoting to something different if things change has been a huge shift for me.

The latter half of September and all of October were extremely busy for me as I wrapped up a big writing project (which I plan to share soon!), was in the throes of essay editing season, got sick for a week, met up with my work team for an in-person meeting, traveled to GA for a family wedding I played violin in, and traveled to Boston for a work trip. In the middle of September as I realized all that was on the horizon for those 6 weeks, I definitely worried that I could not keep Substack up with everything else swirling around me. I was right. But I did not have to throw out my plan and commitment to put out a Substack every two weeks. I could pivot to do something slightly different which is exactly what I did.

You may not have noticed, but my last three Substacks were repurposed from either old Instagram posts (How to read more), old blog posts (My life as a prior PhD student), or a keynote lecture I gave earlier this year (Life lessons learned from the lab). While I did still have to read through the prior material and tailor it for Substack, it took immensely less time than a typical newsletter takes to write. This decision to repurpose content was not what I wanted to do in an ideal world, but it helped me retain bandwidth for other life events while honoring a commitment. Additionally, after coming back to writing for Substack I am invigorated and excited to write instead of it feeling like a chore.

There are other areas of my life that I have had to pivot recently and I try to look at the opportunities of pivoting as a way to train myself in something that does not come naturally to me. With all the travel/sickness of October, I have not been to the gym as consistently. Instead of throwing my plans out the window because I can not meet my goal of going to the gym 4x/week, I have tried to go 3x/week while knowing that I will likely ramp back up to 4x/week when life calms down some. Reading has also really taken a backseat in October. I only read 4 books in October when in typical months I read 6-8 books. I have had to keep reminding myself that those 6 weeks were a season of different priorities and that I will return to reading more when I feel ready especially. I also want to enjoy reading and not force it for the sake of reading.

The more I talk to older, wiser people in my life, the more I see the importance of pivoting and being able to change gears quickly. I especially observe this in my job when I am working on one project, but another more important one comes to the top of my inbox requiring me to shift my attention. Being able to quickly redirect my focus without having an attitude is often the difference between a good work day and a bad work day for me. We do not know what we will go through in life and most elements of life do not go to as we expect even though we spend so much time meticulously crafting the perfect plan.

I still do feel immense satisfaction when my plans do work how I intended them to, however, my identify and happiness is not wrapped up in the success of those plans. There is much more gratification in being able to gracefully navigate the changes of life than strong-arm my plan into happening the way I envisioned. I view myself as a dancer pirouetting through what comes my way which leads to a calmness as I do not force my will be done, but take what comes with open hands. I expect pivoting is something I will continue to work at my whole life, but I am really thankful to have identified my need to pivot and continue to be challenged in adapting this mindset.