Left to Right Thinking? — by Dan Lynn
By Dan Lynn
If you've read my "Right to Left Thinking" post, you know how my mind works. I start with where I want to end up — a specific goal, a real date — and I work backward to today. It's served me well for 40 years.
One time, a colleague named Elazar Aslan showed me there's another way to live entirely.
Elazar is an incredibly smart and deeply spiritual guy — he studies the mind, mindfulness, how we actually move through the world. One day he said to me: "You're a right-to-left thinker. You figure out where you want to be, and then you figure out how to get there. I'm a left-to-right thinker. I don't know where I want to be — I just let life take me there."
I'd never heard it put that way. My whole life is destinations and deadlines. And here was someone every bit as thoughtful, trusting the current to carry him somewhere worth going — and it did.
Then he said the part that really stuck with me. A right-to-left thinker, he pointed out, can get so locked onto the one goal that he walks right past better opportunities he never planned for. When your eyes are fixed on a single destination, you stop seeing the roads you didn't intend to take.
He wasn't wrong. But I'd add that left-to-right carries its own risk. Drift too freely, with no vision of where you're headed, and life will still take you somewhere — just maybe not somewhere you'd have chosen.
I'll be honest: I didn't change. I'm still right-to-left to my core. But Elazar gave me something almost as valuable as a new habit — the knowledge that mine isn't the only way, and that my way has a blind spot. The planner has to remember to look up from the plan. The wanderer has to remember to pick a direction now and then.
So know which one you are. Then borrow, on purpose, from the other — because each one guards against exactly what the other one misses.
Questions this Key Learning answers
How do I stay focused on a goal without missing better opportunities?
The author still works backward from a specific goal and date, but recognizes the method’s blind spot: intense focus can hide better, unplanned roads. His lesson is that “the planner has to remember to look up from the plan.” Our analysis similarly suggests treating unexpected opportunities as information rather than automatically dismissing them as distractions.
Should I plan my future or let opportunities guide me?
The author presents both approaches as useful and incomplete. Planning backward provides direction, while moving with circumstances creates room for unexpected possibilities. His advice is to know which style comes naturally, then deliberately borrow from the other. A chosen direction can prevent aimless drift, while openness can reveal a better route than the one originally planned.
What do I do when new evidence challenges my original plan?
Our analysis recommends committing firmly enough to create direction while remaining willing to revise when reality reveals a better route. The plan reflects what was known at the beginning; experience adds information that was unavailable then. The author’s version is simpler: look up from the plan periodically and notice roads that were never part of the original destination.