What Is The Best Way To Live Your Life?

What is the best approach to life on a day to day basis?  Should you wake up in the morning with a well thought out plan that allows you to get the most out of the hours you have available?  Should you concentrate on developing the habits that promise to turn you into the kind of person you really want to be?  Or you should approach the day with a free spirit and an open mind and let the opportunities that come up guide you, taking you to places you would never have dreamed of going?


I have to say that there is something to be said for all of them.  I certainly enjoy the feeling of contentment and control you get when you finish the last job on your list according to your plan and then go to bed - at the time you intended - happy in the knowledge of a day well spent.  There is also something very satisfying about acquiring a new habit.  I feel better and may well be healthier for having taken up running twice daily. It isn't far, I only do half a mile each time as a rule.  But even so, it does mean that I run more than marathon every month.  I find that thought pleasing though it isn't really all that much of an achievement.  And sometimes just going with the flow works as well.

So which is best?  I am going to have to cop out and say that I think the best approach is to have a mixture. You can enjoy all three the more for not pursuing them exclusively.  The question is what is the best balance between them.  And how do you choose which particular approach to use on a particular day.  I can't say I have the answers, but here are my current thoughts.

Planning and organising are hard work, but can pay high dividends.  I think at least one day a week should be devoted to this.  There are certain goals that simply cannot be achieved without this kind of discipline.  For example if you want to learn something new like computer programming or learning a language.  You are not going to get off the ground with them unless you invest some serious up-front grunt.  But you want to build habits as well.   Getting started on a language might well be the kind of thing you have to force yourself to concentrate on, but unless you get into the habit of say reading novels in that language the skill you acquired by hard work is going to get lost pretty quickly.  You have to get to the stage where it is something you just do.  I think the bulk of your time needs to devoted to habit building and exercising your skills.  The  one I have trouble with is the being spontaneous approach.  I am sure you need to do this, and maybe do it quite a lot.  But I have never worked out how to plan how to be spontaneous.