I’ve noticed two kinds of social people: planners and adlibbers.
Planners are the people you call and say “Hey, do you want to hang out?” and they say “Sure, how about next Tuesday for coffee at 6pm?” Their weekends and evenings are scheduled in advance and if you want to see them you have to slot into their schedules.
Adlibbers are the people who answer “I’ll be there in 5 minutes,” or “I’m busy, maybe some other time.”
Adlibbers are impulsive and like to have a sense of freedom and flow in their social lives. They might have a few things on their schedules (concerts, ski trips, etc) but the bulk of their free time is unplanned and they like it that way. Having an open schedule gives them the freedom to do whatever’s most important at that time, and not to let an event they planned two weeks ago trump something they absolutely want to do right now.
Planners know what’s important to them and their schedule is a way to make sure they get to the people and activities that matter most.
Neither group is necessarily busier than the other. I know adlibbers who are constantly buzzing with activity, but if you knock on their door at 10pm on the right night you’ll find yourself making fondue and talking until the wee hours. And I know planners who schedule hours of downtime every night.
I’ve heard people say that adlibbers become planners when they have kids. That might be true to some extent, but I know parents who adlib their social lives, and I know childless people whose evenings are scheduled weeks out. I think there’s something more innate that makes you a planner or an adlibber, not just the circumstances of your life.
I’m not a planner so I don’t understand planners as well, but when I stayed in a monastery a few years ago, someone told me about a medieval monk who upon first seeing his tiny, bare chamber and the rigorous, highly planned monastic schedule that dictated his actions for the rest of his life, said “This is the scaffold that gives me the freedom to work with both hands.” And that made sense to me.
What I have found is that planners and adlibbers often exist in separate, mostly incompatible worlds. Adlibbers hang out with adlibbers and planners with planners. As an adlibber, I have friends who are planners, but most of the people I spend time with are also adlibbers. I don’t mind having a couple of things on my schedule but if things fill up too much, I start to get antsy, no matter how much I like the people on my calendar.
In my job my days have often been highly scheduled, and I have trips and meetings planned weeks out. I’ve learned to adapt to this over the years, to go with the flow and try to bring my best self to every appointment. But when it comes to my social life, there’s nothing better than waking up Sunday to an SMS that says “Brunch?”
A couple of related articles, more work-oriented:
- The pmarca guide to personal productivity
- Maker schedule, manager schedule by Paul Graham
- Programmers: stop whining, be productive by Alex Onsager
Posted on 17 October 2009
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It’s called children. The shapers of your plans
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This makes me think I’m a bit of a lycanthrope. Using your terms I am an adlibber alone and in one to one social interactions, but when doing something with more people (say, a team lunch) I become a rabid, frothing planner. Something about a group *potentially* going all adlib on me triggers this really intense aversion. It’s really unpleasant for me (and no doubt all the adlibbers around me) and I’d be happy if I could purge myself of it. The problem is turning planner on everyone… tends to be effective. Quite a dilemma.
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Yeah, what Sean said. Kids (especially younger ones) do best with structure. I suppose that some people are planners by choice, even in the absence of children (although I sure wasn’t). After kids come along, though, everyone becomes a planner whether they like it or not.
In my family, we actually have to work hard to NOT plan our weekends. -
Likewise. It’s children. Free time is limited and we can’t drop everything without leaving a partner with the workload. On the other hand, we never need to negotiate a meeting place with non-parents – it’s always our place or our neighborhood.
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I think partners more than kids change your style.
I think I might have been a planner by nature – I don’t know because I grew up with two extreme adlibbers. I’ve always been comfortable with people calling and saying “hey, want to hang out now?” (I was used to moving to a different country on a whim!) But my SO is much more structured. He doesn’t want to go out right now on a whim. So I plan things with him to make sure I get the things I want to do with him on his schedule!
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I wonder about the extent to which the ubiquity of cell phones has allowed people to become adlibbers who might otherwise have been planners… certainly, when I was in school, nobody ever planned anything in advance, but the adlibbing was utterly dependent on being able to call anyone, anytime, whether they were at home or already at a bar or restaurant or some such, and I can’t help but think that previous generations of students must have been much better planners than we were.
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Totally! Do you remember what it was like to plan to meet someone before cell phones? There was a lot of waiting and watching crowds expectantly.
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Having a kid has definitely added structure to my daily life, but it hasn’t changed me from an adlibber to a planner socially. I’m a lot less flexible in when and where I can hang out, though. I find myself saying, “I’m busy, maybe some other time,” more than I used to, or asking people to come to me instead. We’ve also make a conscious effort in our lives to not become insular or afraid to take E. out in public, so things like brunch or dinner (as long as it’s an earlier one) are definitely still possibilities for us. That helps.
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I was thinking of you guys when I wrote this — you’re the counterexample to the “kids make you into planners” argument. You’ve got E, but you’re still open to having 7 or 8 people show up at your house one evening for a spontaneous dinner party. You’re role models to us all.
Also, I honestly wasn’t thinking of kids very much when I wrote this. Five or 10 years ago, when none of my friends had kids, there were clearly already planners and adlibbers.
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This is almost the same as the last letter in the Myer Briggs Type Indicator ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator), which I find very useful time to time.
Nice post btw. -
In social life I prefer to be with adlibbers.
However, on a slightly unrelated note to your post, I prefer to have a good mixture of adlibbers and planners in a company. planners make fantastic project managers.
I have found some of the planners to be not spontaneous and could not give instantaneous replies when faced with critical questions. However they are very good at writing good blog posts and give a stunning work, if given enough time and questions are pre-known.
A similar comparison that I could think of is: Golf players and Baseball players. Golf players are planners and Baseball players are adlibbers. Golf needs careful planning and slow, clear thorough execution. Baseball needs timing and on-the-spot smart reflexes.
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