Make a Plan

Make a plan

In one episode of the TV show The Office, bumbling branch manager Michael Scott has been told by upper management that he has to lay off one of his employees before the end of the month. Michael hates doing unpopular things, so he puts it off again and again. On the last day of the month, with only a few hours left, he still hasn’t decided who to lay off. One of the salesmen, Jim Halpert, drily sums up Michael’s knack for denial: “I think he keeps hoping that someone’s going to volunteer. Or be run over by a bus before the deadline.”

There are self-deceptive ways of coping with the thought of something unpleasant, such as coming up with rationalizations for why a task isn’t actually necessary, or flat-out denial, in the vein of Michael Scott. But there are also honest coping strategies, like coming up with a hypothetical plan.

I once felt guilty about something inconsiderate I had done to a friend and spent a week trying to justify my behavior to myself. Should I apologize? “No, that’s unnecessary. She probably didn’t even notice,” I told myself, at various times; and “She probably forgave me already anyway,” at other times. Obviously, I didn’t find these internally contradictory justifications fully satisfying, which is why I had to keep having the same argument with myself again and again.

Finally, I asked myself: “Okay, suppose I had to apologize. How would I do it?” It didn’t take me long to draft in my head the rough contours of an apology that I felt I could deliver without too much angst. And when I imagined my friend’s reaction, I realized that I expected her to be appreciative, not angry. Once the prospect of apologizing seemed tolerable, I returned to my original question: “Should I apologize?” Now the answer was much clearer: “Yes, I should.”

It’s striking how much the urge to conclude “That’s not true” diminishes once you feel like you have a concrete plan for what you would do if the thing were true. It doesn’t have to be elaborate. Even a simple plan, like “Here’s how I would explain the failure to my team . . .” or “Here’s how I would begin my search for a new job . . .” goes a long way toward making you feel like you don’t need to rely on denial to cope with reality.