The Plan Is There Is No Plan

Plan ye hai ki koi plan nahin hai.

I say this a lot. People laugh. They think it's a joke. I let them think that. But it's probably the most honest thing I've ever said.

Not having a plan is not the same as not having direction. I have direction. I know what I care about: building things, making beautiful stuff, writing, travelling, being around people who make me feel alive. That's the direction.

But a plan? A five-year plan? A sequence of predetermined steps that assumes I know what the world will look like in 2029?

No.

The thing about plans is they give you a feeling of control in exchange for your ability to be surprised. And I'd rather be surprised. Every interesting thing that has happened to me — every meaningful project, every friendship that matters, every country that changed me, every poem, every stage — all of it happened because I didn't have a plan. I had space. Openness. A willingness to say "I don't know what's next" and mean it.

People think uncertainty is uncomfortable. It is. But so is a treadmill. At least uncertainty takes you somewhere new.

I've changed direction so many times. Graphic design to web development to Web3 to AI to theatre to whatever comes next. Every pivot looked chaotic from the outside. From the inside, every single one felt like the obvious next thing.

Because when you don't have a plan, you can feel the pull. You can hear the thing calling you. When you have a plan, all you can hear is the plan.

Koi plan nahin hai. And somehow that keeps working out.

-I.R.