Are you someone who likes to feel spontaneous all the time?

Do you hate the thought of planning your meals?

Does your fantasy self get home from work and miraculously have a sumptuous dinner on the table in 15 minutes?

What happens when your fantasy self runs smack dab into the wall of reality?

Is there some way you could change how you think about planning, such that it would actually give you more options, and more opportunities for spontaneity?

Let’s say your fantasy self likes to go to the farmers' market every day, see what’s there, grab something that looks good, bring it home, and magically whip up something fantastic for dinner.

For some of you, this is actually the case. Maybe it’s summertime and you’re retired and have time to go to the farmers' market every day.

And maybe your favorite meal is a stir-fry using whatever vegetables look good from the farmers' market, eaten plain, or topped with a sauce that you can quickly make in your Vitamix, or even with just some Balsamic vinegar. 

Having different vegetables each day with the same sauce, or a different sauce every day with the same vegetables, could give you the variety that you crave.

But maybe you don’t have time to go to the farmers' market every day.

Or maybe it’s somewhere between October and May and the farmers' market is closed.

What then?

Or maybe you’re somebody who really does better with recipes, so you need to go shopping with a list, and you’re at a loss for what to do with a random bag of produce. 

What then? If you're someone who needs recipes but doesn't like to plan, what on earth do you do?

Is there a way to make this work for you? If so, what would that look like?

Maybe you want to decide what to make each day when the day comes. Okay.

Are you willing to have a rough list of the things you might want to make this week, and have the ingredients for those in the house, but not decide which thing to make until the "day of?"

Are you willing to substitute ingredients if you can’t get exactly the ones you want?

If the recipe for super three greens casserole includes green beans, Brussels sprouts, and kale, could you live with using broccoli or cauliflower or carrots instead of one of those vegetables if you can’t get them?

In fact, would the possibility that something like that could happen be all the spontaneity you need?

For me, having the rough plan of making super three greens casserole with whatever vegetables are available and look good would allow me to feel safe and secure that I’m going to have a meal I love, while allowing me the flexibility of putting in whatever vegetables I feel like having or that are available that day.

And here's something that might seem counterintuitive, but which has stood the test of time among diehard planners and anti-planning rebels alike:

Having a plan which allows for flexibility and spontaneity gives you a lot more freedom than having no plan and discovering at 5 or 6 pm that you have no idea what you want to eat and nothing in your refrigerator looks good. 

That doesn’t feel spontaneous at all. That feels like you have NO choices. To me, that feels super limiting.

So if your summer plan is to go to the farmers' market every day, or once a week if you don’t live near the farmers' market or if you don’t have time to go there every day, what might your winter plan look like if you want to feel like you’ve gone to the farmers' market?

What if you just went to the supermarket once or twice a week, and bought whatever vegetables looks good to you, just as you'd do at the farmers market in the summer?

And you could plan your menu based around that, just as you would if you had gone to the farmers market.

And if you’re someone who really likes to go to the farmers' market every day, what if you thought of your refrigerator as the winter version of the farmers' market?

What if you just opened your fridge, picked out a few things that looked good, stir-fried them or steamed them and threw on a sauce or a flavored vinegar, some seeds or a half an ounce of chopped nuts?

Would that be enough spontaneity for you?

Would it feel more freeing than coming home after a long day at work and having no idea what you were going to eat and feeling paralyzed and like you had zero choices?

I would submit that doing a small amount of planning, and knowing that you have a whole bunch of options that you could choose from on any given day, would give you a lot more spontaneity than not planning at all, and then having to start from scratch every night, which doesn’t sound very free to me at all.

What if your plan were simply that you were going to have two pieces of fruit every day, without specifying which two kinds of fruit?

Would that allow you to feel spontaneous enough?

What if your plan were that you would steam or stir-fry some vegetables for dinner, and you planned just enough to make sure that you had a bunch of vegetables in the house, but you didn’t specify which vegetables you would have on any given night?

Would that allow you to feel spontaneous enough?

If you decided that you'd put some kind of beans on your salad each day, and kept several types of beans in your house but never decided until lunchtime which beans it would be that day, would that allow you to feel spontaneous enough?

Planning is not the enemy of spontaneity!

In fact, it can be the very thing that allows spontaneity.

Knowing you've got your bases covered means you don't have to worry and you are free to do whatever you want.

My experience is that doing a little bit of planning is the very thing that allows me to be very flexible and spontaneous.

It’s failing to plan that feels limiting and rigid to me.

Because then I have no options. And I hate that.

What do you think? Do you think a little bit of planning might increase your freedom?

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