The difference between planning and perseverating is worry.
Planning is being prepared to do your best. It is focusing on the effort.
Perseverating is worrying about the outcome.
Planning brings down anxiety when you focus on the effort. When you focus on the outcome you begin to worry.
Why?
Because in every situation you have little control over outcomes. Once the plan is out in the world, t m he outcome is out of your hands.
The key is focusing on the effort. If you focus on the effort, the outcome usually follows.
Now with that being said planning can become its own issue.
Planning can beget procrastination. You procrastinate because you are afraid to start. You are afraid to start because you are perseverating on the outcome.
“In some ways, planning is focused daydreaming. It allows us to occupy a very cozy conceptual place that is devoid of the randomness and uncertainty inherent in our lives.” Bullet Journal Newsletter, 3/7/24
Uncertainty is where anxiety lives. Planning can help with that anxiety as long as it doesn’t become paralysis.
“Perfect is the enemy of good.” – Voltaire
Striving for perfection leads to procrastination because you are perseverating on the outcome. Your plans will never be perfect.
Striving for perfect is your way of trying to control the outcome, which you have very little control over.
Have a plan and focus on the effort. Execute the plan, and live with the outcome.
“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.” – John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Educational Stoic 