How to Plan With People Who Don’t Like to Plan
‘Planning privilege’ is real
me, planning is a fun part of life — what’s better than figuring out how we’d like to spend our time, and then turning those desires into reality? — but I know that, oddly enough, not everyone shares this love.
I was reminded of this recently when I listened to an episode of the Best Laid Plans podcast, a show all about planners and planning, in which the host, Sarah Hart-Unger, addressed a question from a listener named Nazira: “How do you encourage others to plan, or is it futile? Asking for my husband.”
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The short answer, Hart-Unger noted, is that for the most part, it’s futile. You can’t really make people do things they don’t want to do. With friends who seem allergic to committing things to a calendar, the most you can really do is can shrug and enjoy their company when you do run into them.
With a partner, though, it’s a different matter, especially if there are kids involved. Erica is not alone in having a spouse who refuses to plan. Fortunately, there are ways to plan with people who don’t like to do it — especially if you emphasize the benefits which we planners know that even a spontaneous sort will see.
First, acknowledge planning privilege
In the context of family harmony, the fact that someone doesn’t like to plan doesn’t matter much. As grown-ups, we do all sorts of things we’re not naturally inclined to do because they make our lives run smoothly. And non-planners with complex lives are almost always already benefiting from a planning process.
“If there’s somebody that says ‘Oh, I don’t have to plan, I’m doing bigger things than that,’ they’re probably having a ton of planning done for them by others,” Hart-Unger said in her podcast. She calls this an expression of “planning privilege” — the non-planner can believe that babysitters just show up when you need them, that family members and friends get seen regularly, that vacations just happen, and that children’s weekend schedules are naturally coordinated to ensure that multiple children get to simultaneous playdates and soccer games on time.
That’s fine if everyone agrees to this family division of labor (or if the work is done by a paid personal assistant). But if the planner feels resentful that their work is being treated as if it’s magic, then they absolutely need to speak up.
Raising this issue doesn’t require a fight, though. As Dale Carnegie once wrote in How to Win Friends and Influence People, you can often convince another person that a change is their idea, or at least to their benefit. In his words, you can “arouse in the other person an eager want.”
Rebrand “planning”
The key is to recast the concept of planning. Many people resist making schedules ahead of time — particularly in their nonworking hours — because they assume that scheduling is only for things they don’t want to do. But many wonderful activities require figuring out logistics in advance. Eating at a favorite restaurant might require reservations (and childcare). Attending a sporting event might require getting tickets and arranging a work schedule to allow for the possibility. In Covid times, safely seeing friends outside means planning around the weather.
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To shift someone’s thinking, you might bring up something you know they want to do, but haven’t been able to. Sample script: “I know you’ve been missing going for long bike rides on weekends because we’ve been so busy with all the kids’ activities. If we make a weekend plan ahead of time, we could probably work it out for you to ride and for me to run with my running group too.”
Even if the non-planning person wants to spend their free time doing nothing this, too, requires planning in a busy life. That’s because “doing nothing” often means autonomous hours spent relaxing and not being responsible for kid requests and the like. So you might try this script: “If we think through this weekend ahead of time, we could trade off, with each of us getting a few hours to ourselves to do whatever we’d like.” Mention that you really like to anticipate your fun, and you suspect that your non-planning family member might too. They get to look forward to doing hours of “nothing!” Yep, it’s a plan — we just don’t need to call it that.
Plan in sprints
Of course, even if the other party recognizes the benefits, non-planners often find discussions of details and logistics tedious — meaning they’ll put those discussions off until they’re no longer useful. So the second tactic is to promise to keep planning time to a minimum.
I’m a big fan of a weekly planning meeting of 30 minutes or less. Both of you get out your calendars. You talk through what’s coming up and divvy up responsibilities. You talk about fun future things you’d like to arrange and assign any logistics. And then — this is key — you don’t talk about logistics and plans until the next meeting, unless absolutely necessary. This lets the planner relax because he/she knows there is a time for working out all details. And the non-planner doesn’t have to worry that any of the other 167.5 hours of the week will turn into a discussion of calendars.
There may still be some grumbling, but so it goes. No one likes to relinquish their privilege, “planning privilege” included. The grumbling will lessen over time. If not, you can always offer this option: The party that refuses to be part of household planning has to be okay with whatever the other party comes up with. Sometimes this can be enough to nudge an anti-planner into the game.
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