What do I do when my plans fall apart?
By No Rush · Updated November 3, 2026
The short answer
Give it some time before you decide what it means. In six studies by Daniel Gilbert and colleagues, people expected a setback, like being turned down for a job, to hurt for much longer than it did. Then try one small piece of a new direction before you write a whole new plan. Trying tells you more than planning again.
How do you cope when life doesn't go as planned?
Expect it to hurt for a while, and expect that while to be shorter than it feels now. In the studies by Gilbert and colleagues, people who were turned down for a job or did not get a permanent position guessed they would feel bad for a long time. They recovered faster than they guessed, because people start dealing with a blow almost right away without noticing it.
Should I make a new plan right away?
Probably not a big one. In a study with about 19,000 people, Jordi Quoidbach, Daniel Gilbert and Timothy Wilson found that people of every age said they had changed a lot in the past ten years, and expected to change little in the next ten. A new ten-year plan made today rests on that same guess. Critics point out that the change in the past rests on memory. A plan for the next month asks less of either guess.
What if the plan was part of who I am?
Then you lose more than a plan, and that hurts. Herminia Ibarra studied people at work who were moving into a new role. They figured out the new version of themselves by trying things. They copied habits from colleagues they looked up to, used them at work, and kept what suited them. You can try the next version of you in the same way, in small pieces.
What can I do this week?
Think about what the old plan was for. Maybe it was about a steady income, about making things, or about being good at one thing. Pick one of those and find a small way to try it this month, something you can stop again without losing much. Afterwards, write down how it went and what you'd keep.
In the No Rush app
In the Steps tab, one part helps you explore other directions, and another helps you test one in real life, in a small way. On Home, the app sometimes suggests a small step you can still undo, or a talk with someone who does the work you're curious about.
No Rush app
An iPhone app for people who feel stuck. It sets out one small next step at a time and tells you why that one. It is not therapy.
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Sources
- Gilbert, Pinel, Wilson, Blumberg & Wheatley (1998). Immune neglect: A source of durability bias in affective forecasting. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(3), 617-638. doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.75.3.617
- Quoidbach, Gilbert & Wilson (2013). The end of history illusion. Science, 339(6115), 96-98. doi.org/10.1126/science.1229294
- Ibarra (1999). Provisional selves: experimenting with image and identity in professional adaptation. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(4), 764-791. doi.org/10.2307/2667055
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