Conventional thinkers would tell you that you need to develop a long-term plan for your future then stick it until you reach the goal you had in mind. This plan is supposed to be very detailed and used as a roadmap for everything you do.

A large part of our society is convinced that they have to plan everything to be successful. They have to plan their daily existence, create To Do lists, and set weekly, monthly, annual, and even 10-year goals to achieve anything. That is taking an external perspective, and maybe it works for some people.

But for many of us, especially unconventional thinkers, that’s not how we succeed and our internal process doesn’t work that way. Over-planning your life leads to fighting against people and situations, using force to conquer them to stay on track within your preconceived plan. You can force things to happen, but when you do that you’re not going to be happy with what happens. Living your life by a predetermined plan means that your happiness is based on the future, not in the present.

In contrast, the path for unconventional thinkers is to follow your passion at the moment, and see how that can evolve over time. Instead of focusing on planning a certain future, you’re better off focusing on the present and shifting your mindset to keep you going in the direction you need to be going. This approach is like working with a scientific hypothesis: You get an idea about something and you try it out to see if it works. If it doesn’t work, you try something different.

For the unconventional thinker and entrepreneur, that’s the indicator that you are on the right track: You try something and it works for you. As you continue to go down that road that works for you, you’ll find other things that work for you.

The experience of experimenting with different things will change your behavior, your beliefs, and your mindset. What works for you alters your mindset, which alters your behavior, which leads you down your path. If you look at it from this perspective, there really is no big plan that you need to follow and nothing to figure out except, what is the next thing for you to do to see if it works? This is your indicator to keep going down a particular path or not.

From my perspective, I don’t look at success in terms of planning as much as I do from the organic process, what happens naturally. Life is an experiment, and it is always in the now.