This beloved Russian genre comes from the eponymous children’s book by Grigoriy Oster. Kids love to test the authority and engage with their inner contrarians, so Oster came up with his branded version of naughty and hilarious advice that goes something like this:
If you’re racing your bicycle
Down the hallway
And dad is coming out of the bathroom,
Don’t turn into the kitchen –
There’s a hard refrigerator there…
Break straight into dad.
Dad is soft. He will forgive.
Taking a cue from Oster, we’ve decided to tackle one of our least favorite exercises – setting the goals for the new year. So go ahead, embrace your inner rebel, and make it the best year yet with our super-helpful advice:
Avoid setting SMART goals
Specific, measurable, achievable… Way to make goals boring, right? A goal’s job is to inspire and motivate – who cares if you achieve them or not.
Don’t prioritize, you can tackle all at once
Whoever said that you should have a hierarchy of plans clearly hasn’t heard of multitasking. Hello, you can do everything at once with no need to sacrifice anything at all (well, maybe apart from sleep, but who needs that anyway)!
Don’t set deadlines
Why confine your creative efforts within a short timeframe when you can use your whole life as a canvas? You will fulfill your plans this month or next month, or maybe next year, whenever inspiration pays a visit. You don’t need to keep yourself accountable in any way – after all, isn’t it just adding more pressure to your already busy life?
Write down everything that comes to mind and commit to it immediately
With planning, it’s better to trust your guts and intuition rather than logic. There can never be too many plans, because, see above, you can multitask them all. You also shouldn’t bother evaluating your plans in any way – whether they align with your career ambitions and lifestyle or not, if you’ve written them down, you will have to pursue them. No turning back.
Don’t make any plans
Life is really unpredictable, so why bother planning at all? Just leave everything to chance and live in the moment.
If you are looking for some actual advice, here are our top planning apps and some tips on ultimate planning for your school year.
