By nature a planner, I’m the queen of bulleted checklists. I love calendars and spend a lot of time filling them out.

In many ways, planning can be helpful. Scheduling my time—deciding what writing project to focus on next and when and where I’m going to work on it—means when I sit down to write I’m ready and know what to do. I jump right in.

Planning also reduces stress because after I assign each project a spot on my calendar, I don’t need to think about it, although I might. There are lots of useful, healthy reasons to plan. But it can also hold you back, pen you in and prevent you from reaching out. Which is why spontaneity also has its place, along with throwing caution to the wind and being less rigid.

So every once in a while I turn on my computer and open a random file. I did just that recently and came across a draft of the blog you’re reading right now.