Impulsiveness Should Be The New Plan

For most people, a season of newness is coupled with a cluster of future plans. Whether it’s a new workout regimen, new goals for a relationship, or — as is typical for Harvard students — a new academic approach in pursuit of a 4.0 grade point average, we as humans love to plan for a better future. But that is where the problem lies. We love to plan more than we love to do.

It’s a known fact. This past semester, I learned about the behavioral economics of procrastination and present bias through Economics 10a: “Principles of Economics (Microeconomics).” Though this course is a fan favorite at Harvard, it doesn’t take a class to make most of us aware of our delaying tendencies. We procrastinate every day in our lives — and if you’re like me, multiple times every day. But how did I plan on tackling this problem? By making one of my New Year’s resolutions to stop procrastinating.

There’s this quote by Cornelius Fichtner that’s very popular in vision boards across the nation: “Planning without action is futile, action without planning is fatal.” I disagree. Planning without action is the furthest thing from futile; in fact, it’s even more fatal than action without planning. When time ticks away without a single move made, planning without action wastes potential to the point of no return. One of the worst things someone can do is trap themself in a continuous loop of planning without ever acting.

Such an endless cycle of planning without acting is worse than acting on every opportunity presented — no matter if it ends up good or bad. Either way, you’d learn something about yourself and/or the world. Lessons are best learned actively. Reading something or being told something just doesn’t register the same as experiencing it. Think back to when you learned how to ride a bike. Whether your parents held onto the handlebars alongside you until you got the hang of it, or you started off with a tricycle, then matured to training wheels, and then finally the real thing, at some point you physically rode a bike. Now imagine you had read books and watched videos about riding a bike instead. Does that translate into you being a good bike rider? This has been the subject of much philosophical debate in the form of the thought experiment Mary’s Room.

Yet I, like many others, lean towards planning over acting. It’s easy to be comfortable with where you are physically, financially, and academically. It’s even easier to wish and plan for a better future. It’s much, much harder to start living for the future you want. In order to really achieve the lives we so desire, we need to impulsively create change. Only our impulses break the planning loop and allow us to reach our end goals. The best things often come on a whim.

An impulse made me apply to Harvard. An impulse made me meet my best friends here. An impulse made me take my favorite course, English 179H: “The Harvard Novel,” last term. Impulses are good. They open up possibilities you never even knew existed. An impulsive decision has the ability to transform your life for the better, by pushing you beyond your steady and safe, but limiting and terminal, comfort zone. You can experience new things, as opposed to merely thinking about them, and so you can grow in a way that endlessly planning will never achieve. Impulses prove that you are not a passing spectator in your own life, just going through the motions, but the fully autonomous protagonist, free to alter your life in any way you so choose. The ability to be instinctive is a testament to being alive. From familial expectations to surrounding limitations, in life, it’s easy to follow the path that has been created for you. Spontaneity means straying from the path and forging your own.

This semester, I’m ditching the planner in me and embracing the compulsions. I don’t want to overthink everything. Especially at an institution like Harvard, opportunities are all around us. If we shy away from things because they don’t fall neatly into our perfectly drafted life plans, we lose in the end.

Being impulsive pays off. Change doesn’t come from planning; it comes from simply doing, and continuing to do. Planning is always going to be a part of our lives, but does it have to encompass every part? There is so much more than what we can imagine in the months before the start of something new. Why should we withhold the joy of unprecedented experience from ourselves?

Christina N. Chaperon ’25, a Crimson Editorial editor, lives in Greenough Hall.