Who shouldn’t make plans

The topic of time management nowadays is more popular than ever. Never before has human society felt so acutely the shortage of the most expensive resource in the world. And this is despite the fact that every day we come up with more and more ways to save this time! We move by cars and planes, we solve most everyday problems with the help of technology, and if you urgently need to contact someone, it is only a matter of a couple of seconds needed to type a message in the messenger. But even so, it seems like time is only getting shorter. Therefore, many psychologists and coaches recommend to strictly schedule your day, make plans and live according to the schedule. However, in reality, this lifestyle is not for everyone.

Let’s look at this question through the prism of Human Design – knowledge, the cornerstone of which is the thesis of the uniqueness of each individual and his special “path” through life.

Planning and Ego Center

Human Design says that inside each person there are 9 Centers – places where one or another type of energy is generated, which is used in our daily life. The issues of planning, purposefulness and productivity lie within the competence of the so-called Ego Center. Depending on the structure of your Design, this Center may be open or defined.

You can read more about the Ego Center at the link.

There are about 30% of people with defined Ego Center in the world. By nature, they are distinguished by high productivity and purposefulness, they easily set themselves and achieve their goals. And it is the correct setting of tasks that is the main key to success for them. If people with a certain Ego have to, as they say, “go with the flow”, then they can easily be carried away to nowhere, far from their original goal. Therefore, it often happens that they lose themselves in achieving other people’s desires, not realizing how it came to be that they were working for someone else.

How can this manifest itself? Let’s look at a simple but very revealing example. Suppose a person with defined Ego does not know what to do at a particular moment in his life. He just goes with the flow and grabs at those things that randomly appear in front of him. And so, at one such moment, he may suddenly hear that his friend wants to enroll in programming courses. And, without even having time to think properly, a person with a certain Ego enrolls in the same courses, for some reason deciding that he is interested in it. Subsequently, after some time, he will certainly be disappointed in his decision, since he accepted it completely without looking back at his own desires. People with a certain ego should always have a goal. And if they do not find their own, they will be busy fulfilling someone else’s. That’s the mechanics.

This also works for shorter periods of time. Let’s say a person with defined Ego has planned out part of his day. Worked out, went to the gym, cleaned the house. And then – free time. What will he do in this case? In most cases, with what he accidentally falls under his arm, but not with what he really needs. Simply because his “must” was not part of his plan, which means that the implementation of these activities is not a priority.

Therefore, carriers of defined Ego need to paint their day as often as possible and in as much detail as possible. And it does not matter if there is not enough time to complete everything. At least they can be sure that they were engaged in their own plans all the time, and were not involved in cases and things that accidentally came to hand.

A completely different situation is with people with open Ego Center. For them, concepts such as: time management, planning, etc. are very conditional. The fact is that their willpower and determination in achieving goals are very unstable. Today there is a mood, but tomorrow there is not. And you never know what a new day will bring. Therefore, in most cases, they achieve their goals in completely non-obvious, and sometimes simply unpredictable ways. And in this case, making plans will only aggravate the situation, interfering with the free, creative flight of their lives.

How to increase productivity for people with open Ego Center

There are some simple but effective recommendations on how people with open Ego Center can increase the fruitfulness of their endeavors.

1. Stop relying on planning and scheduling for the day. Also, don’t try to take on an unbearable amount of things – it’s much more efficient for you to move step by step. That is, they outlined one task, completed it, and moved on to the next. This way you can avoid unnecessary stress from the fact that you do not have time to fulfill all your plans, and besides, by focusing on one thing at a time, you will be able to cope with it much better.
2. Don’t limit yourself to rigid boundaries. Do not try to “effort of will” to accomplish in a day what, obviously, should take at least a week. A common problem for people with open Ego Center is a misjudgment of their own abilities. Try not to overestimate yourself unnecessarily and, without any self-judgment, set long deadlines for completing each task.
3. Don’t multitask. One of the modern theories about productivity says that you need to be able to do several things at once. Like, in this case, you can do much more. On the one hand, this has a grain of meaning. For example, when the question concerns routine things and activities that you have already brought to automatism. But if the tasks before you require increased attention and creativity, then it is better to devote enough time to each of them separately. Otherwise, due to defocusing, you will only screw up in every case for nothing, and spend much more time redoing it.

Using the example of Ego Center, we discussed with you the question of how to relate to time management. You need to understand that each of us is a separate Universe, and advice that helps one person well may be completely inapplicable in your case. Therefore, the first thing you need to do is to learn about your own uniqueness by deciphering your own Bodygraph. Knowing yourself better, you will be able to understand what rhythm of life really suits you and how you should behave in each specific situation.

A full decoding of your chart in pdf format is available here.