To Plan or Not To Plan
I like to have a plan. I still carry around a paper diary, I love a spreadsheet and a clear itinerary makes my heart sing. In the past, on family holidays, we had to schedule in ‘unstructured time’ to meet the competing needs of my very neurodiverse family and I still block out days in my diary as ‘free time’ with no plans.
What does surprise some people (including my children) is that I don’t actually enjoy the planning process (although stickers and washi tape help). Planning is something that I have learnt to do out of necessity because I have a very poor working memory. I cannot hold very much information in my head without becoming overwhelmed and dysregulated.
While I’m in something, I can hold onto everything; in lectures everything made so much sense that I wouldn’t take notes because it was all obvious, until I was faced with a blank page and had to find my own way back into the topic. It’s the same with my work now; while I’m in session with someone I can hold onto multiple threads and see all the connections (thanks pattern recognition) and I’m quick to recall relevant information from past sessions, but details of my availability or remembering which sessions are already in the diary or have been rescheduled elude me.
All of the systems and routines I use are there to support me to compensate for the difficulty that my poor working memory creates. I have learnt that I cannot be trusted with dates or times any more than I can rely on my ability to recognise faces. My brain just doesn’t hold onto this information. (Unlike my knowledge of mid-nineties indie music, which still persists.)
I learnt quite early on that it took me far more energy to put off doing most things, because if I wasn’t constantly thinking about it, I ran the risk of forgetting. Holding things in my head takes too much, so I learnt to do what I could as soon as possible so overall the energetic cost was as low as it could be. This means I’m generally the one asking if we should just get the tickets booked (leading to possibly the most expensive pub crawl I’ve ever been on where we all body doubled and ended up collectively spending more on events than anyone’s beer budget).
It also means that professionally I’ve got my annual leave booked twelve months in advance, I know exactly how many days I have next year to offer additional training dates and Zena and I have already booked in all the training and workshops we are offering next year.
I can’t leave things to the last minute, because the worry that I will forget will cause such distress and dysregulation that it will get in the way of me enjoying anything else. This doesn’t mean I always manage it and things slip through occasionally, but on the whole I am much happier when I have a plan as opposed to when I’m being spontaneous (unless it’s my scheduled time for being spontaneous).
Just like I teach when I’m sharing how I work with the Two Spirals Model.
I first needed to know how my brain processes information. It takes a lot of energy for me to remember things that need to be done.
Then I had to understand what that meant for me and how I moved through the world. It is often more efficient to do the thing or have a system to remind me than to try to remember.
Finally, I had to accept these truths about myself and give myself permission to meet my needs. If I am never going to be the person who can put things off without a high cost, then I might as well do them as soon as possible and enjoy having colourful planners full of stickers to stand in for my working memory so I have more capacity for things that are important to me in the moment.
We all process things differently, regardless of our neurotype, but knowing how your brain works, understanding what that means and accepting it enough to give yourself permission to work with it can be a game changer for many of us. It certainly was for me.
If you’re a planner like me, or if you’d like to give it a try, then you can make a start on your 2027 plans by booking onto January’s training ‘Supporting Neurodivergent Clients with The Two Spirals Model’ where Zena and I will be looking at how to integrate the model into your practice, including why it’s important to understand how clients process information so that you can support them to gain Knowledge, Understanding and Acceptance.
And as a bonus for being on team planner, you can take advantage of the earlybird price of £155 (only available until 30th November 2026, then £175).
Course Details
Date: Friday 29 January 2027Time: 9.30am–3.00pm (UK time)Location: Online via Zoom
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