Comment by Aurornis
3 days ago
In my experience, the best case scenario for students (or anyone) who do these elaborate planning rituals is that it serves as a catharsis that moves their anxieties from their brain to some paper. Relieved, they loosen up and get back to making progress while forgetting about their detailed 5-year plan
The worst case is when this ritual produces a rigid set of unrealistic goals that the person almost immediately fails to achieve. This new sense of failure is compounded on top of existing anxieties and now they’re making even less progress than before while being even more sad about it.
Having supervised high-achieving students in undergrad research settings, I just tell them to chill out, be a whole person with friends and hobbies, and lots of things will just fall into place. The fact that they're where they are (i.e., fancy university, research group, yadda yadda) shows they're the kind of person to take initiative. The fact that they worry shows that they care. They're already way ahead.
The real gains at that point are in connections, reputation, and getting into the habit of physical exercise.
I think the key word here is undergrad research setting. Having an advisor or a department or DGS or Dean breathing down your neck and tumbleweeds in your bank account is an entirely different can of worms.
It seems to me creating a 5y list of daily goals is a recipe to immediately be behind on 1000s on tasks within a few weeks. The thing about estimates is the best case scenario is they take 0 time, worst case is unlimited. When you are planning 5y of tasks when you don't really even know what you're doing, a large majority will completely explode once you dig into them. I've never seen a detailed 5y plan hold up in any area, I'm sceptical to what extent the author has actually done so.
My advice to young people: focus on activities that have some combination of the traits: eventually mandatory, reduce uncertainty about the future, leave open further choices that interest you, benefit you if accomplished sooner.
Yeah this is how it works for me, for sure - as much as I like to frame my penchant for planning and scheduling and lists, the underlying truth is it’s a coping method for anxiety.
There are definitely times where I don’t NEED to plan things out in such a strict detailed way, in order to achieve a good outcome; but i do it anyway because it soothes me.
And as you say, internalizing that ‘approach, not outcome’ and ‘journey, not destination’ outlook is definitely what makes this little arrangement ‘work’ for me. It really helps failures to feel more like learning opportunities, less like let downs or blows to my self-worth.