Disability Has Made Me Very Good at Planning - Sometimes Too Good

Planning is one of those skills people praise until they see it in full working order.

“Very organised,” they say, approvingly, when you remember the charger, the medication, the accessible route, the weather forecast, the backup route, the contact number and the fact that the café’s only toilet is apparently up a narrow staircase designed during the reign of Queen Victoria.

For many disabled people, this level of preparation is not a personality quirk or a fondness for spreadsheets. It is how ordinary life remains possible. A trip that looks spontaneous from the outside may have involved checking access, energy, transport, seating, timings and what happens if one part of the plan falls over. Which it often does, because the world has an extraordinary confidence in the phrase “step-free access” while treating it as an optional creative interpretation.

Over time, planning becomes second nature. It can be deeply useful. It can also become rather too good at its job.

Planning is often care, not caution

There is a tendency to describe disabled people as “brave” for doing everyday things. I would usually settle for a functioning lift and a door that does not require the upper-body strength of a competitive rower.

The reality is that everyday activities can carry extra consequences. A poorly timed outing, inaccessible venue or unexpected delay may mean pain, exhaustion, missed medication, a difficult journey home or several days spent recovering. Planning is therefore an act of self-care. It gives us a better chance of spending our limited energy on the thing we actually wanted to do, rather than on avoiding preventable problems.

That planning can look like checking whether a building is genuinely accessible rather than merely compliant on paper. It can mean allowing generous travel time, packing essentials, making contingency arrangements, or deciding that two demanding commitments in one day are simply too much.

None of that is overreaction. It is sensible risk management. Engineers are very fond of risk management, usually after something expensive has caught fire. Disabled people often have to do it before leaving the house.

There is a quiet competence in this. We learn to spot weak points in a plan, ask better questions and think beyond the optimistic default. Those are useful skills in work, relationships and life generally. The trouble is that a skill developed for survival does not always know when to clock off.

When every plan needs a backup plan

The line between useful preparation and over-planning is not always obvious. For me, it appears when the planning starts to consume more energy than the activity itself is likely to require.

You want to meet someone for coffee. A straightforward human arrangement, you might think. Then the brain begins its committee meeting.

Is the café accessible? Is it noisy? Can I sit comfortably? What is the nearest parking or transport option? What if it rains? What if the accessible toilet is out of order? What if the train is late? What if I am having a worse day than expected? Should there be a backup café? A backup route? A backup social life?

Some of these questions are entirely reasonable. Some are my mind attempting to create a fully redundant architecture for buying a flat white. There is a point at which even NASA might gently suggest we scale the mission down.

The problem is not that the risks are imaginary. Disabled people are often very familiar with the consequences of other people failing to think ahead. The problem is that the brain can begin treating every uncertainty as a problem that must be solved before action is permitted.

But life does not offer that sort of guarantee. It is gloriously, irritatingly incomplete. Weather changes. Venues get things wrong. Bodies have opinions. Other people turn up late. Sometimes the best available plan is good enough, and sometimes that has to be enough.

Leaving room for the unplanned

This is not an argument for throwing preparation away and hoping for the best. “Just be spontaneous” is often advice offered by people whose body, environment and timetable have rarely made spontaneity costly.

It is about making planning proportionate. I find it helpful to distinguish between the things that genuinely need certainty and the things that can remain flexible.

A medication requirement, an access barrier, a safe journey home or a limited energy budget may need proper thought. The precise table in a café, the exact minute of departure or a dozen hypothetical failures may not.

That distinction is easier said than done. Planning can feel reassuring because it creates a sense of control. When your body or environment can be unpredictable, control is understandably attractive. It is the emotional equivalent of wrapping bubble wrap around the entire day and then wondering why it is difficult to move.

A useful question is: what is the minimum preparation that lets me take part safely and reasonably comfortably? Not perfectly. Not with every possible contingency neutralised. Safely and reasonably comfortably.

Sometimes that means choosing an easier option. Sometimes it means asking for help. Sometimes it means accepting that a plan may need to change halfway through. That is not a planning failure. It is what plans are for.

The people around us matter

Good planning should also make room for other people without making them responsible for everything. Friends, family and colleagues can help enormously when they understand that access details and pacing are not fussy extras.

The kindest thing someone can often do is ask a practical question without making it dramatic: “What would make this manageable?” Or: “Shall we have a backup option?”

That question leaves room for agency. It does not presume incapacity, and it does not demand that someone justify every need. It simply treats participation as something worth arranging properly.

And for those of us who plan, it can help to say what we need plainly. Most people cannot anticipate barriers they have never had to navigate. We do not have to produce a legal brief, a medical history and an annotated site plan. A clear request is usually enough.

Planning has given me valuable tools: foresight, resilience, an appreciation for a decent contingency and a healthy distrust of venue websites. I would not willingly lose those things. But I am learning that preparation should support life, not become a substitute for it.

There will always be days when careful planning is essential. And there should still be room, where possible, for the occasional imperfect plan, the unverified café, the slightly later train, and the reminder that we are allowed to do things before every variable has been persuaded to behave.