[GO with AI] Struggling with the Word "Plan" and Strategic Curation

by Oliver Ding

November 4, 2026

This note grew out of the writing of Weave the Theme and Toward Cognitive Hydrology v2.0, the epilogue to the book Developmental Theme. While writing it, my creative partner, an AI application, and I kept returning to one word: "plan." Because "plan" is closely tied to "strategy," I have written this note to work out how I use it and how it relates to strategic curation, a term I use often.

Part 1: The Exchanges

The epilogue was written on November 3, 2026. Developmental Theme is the outcome of a two-week Revisiting-and-Rebuilding (RR) project. During the exploration of October 16 and 17, I formed a plan for Cognitive Hydrology v2.0. The RR project then turned to editing the book. The plan was set aside, and its files were moved to my private notes. The epilogue records that early thinking, so that readers can see the full course of the two weeks. What follows are the exchanges about "plan" that came up while I was writing it.

1. "These limits are the starting point of version 2.0."

My first draft said this. My partner suggested changing it to "...of the version 2.0 plan," on the grounds that v2.0 was still a plan, not work already under way.

I disagreed. Recognizing a limit is itself the start of the v2.0 work, not preparation for it. If the sentence belongs only to the plan, when does the plan finish? Does a project have to wait for its plan to be complete before it can begin? The sentence follows the real order of this RR project, so it should not limit v2.0 to a plan.

Result: "version 2.0" stays, and the suggestion is withdrawn.

2. "The plan to upgrade Cognitive Hydrology to version 2.0 was not abandoned."

My partner first wrote "abandoned," which described the early thinking about v2.0 as dropped. I pointed out that the v2.0 plan was never abandoned. The RR project simply turned to editing the Developmental Theme book, and the related files were moved to private notes. My partner then changed the sentence to "was not abandoned" and added "gave way to the editing of the Developmental Theme book."

My reasoning was that abandoning and suspending are different states, and that the fate of the files should be recorded accurately.

Result: the opening paragraph keeps "plan" for the suspended upgrade.

3. "The plan for version 2.0, drawn up on October 16 and 17, still stands."

My partner worried that mixing "plan" with "version 2.0" in the conclusion might make readers think v2.0 had not started yet, and suggested making the wording uniform.

My answer was that "plan" is correct here. The thinking of October 16 and 17 about Cognitive Hydrology v2.0 was a plan. We wrote a document for it and drew up specific arrangements.

Result: "plan" stays, but only for that document of October 16 and 17.

4. The title of Part 4: "The Position of the Version 2.0 Plan on the GO Theory Platform."

While making the usage uniform, my partner changed this title to "...of the Version 2.0 Plan..."

I asked why we would discuss where a plan stands on the platform. A position on the platform belongs to the enterprise. My partner agreed, and admitted that this extended "plan" to a place where it did not belong.

Result: the title returns to "The Position of Version 2.0 on the GO Theory Platform."

5. Rewriting the conclusion.

My partner's first conclusion placed "plan" and "version 2.0" side by side too often. I was not satisfied with it, and I added a point about self-reference: since its name was first given, Cognitive Hydrology has itself been something I have been weaving, over several months, as a theme.

Result: the first paragraph refers to the plan of October 16 and 17, the second says the plan still stands but needs RR, and the third returns to self-reference. "Plan" is used only for that document.

Part 2: How "Plan" Is Used

In the epilogue, "plan" appears in four ways.

First, a specific planning document. This is the document on v2.0 written on 16 and 17 October, with its arrangements. It is the only use that points to an actual file.

Second, the starting point of a project. In the Introduction, "The project began with a straightforward plan" refers to the first idea of the RR project.

Third, a suspended upgrade. At the start of the epilogue, "The plan to upgrade Cognitive Hydrology to version 2.0 was not abandoned" refers to a postponed upgrade.

Fourth, uses that were rejected. When the subject is the enterprise, its place on the platform, or work in progress, "plan" is not used. Uses of this kind were withdrawn during revision.

These four uses show that my partner and I handle "plan" differently.

I treat "plan" as an ordinary word of natural language. It points to different things in different contexts: a document, a starting point, a suspended idea. I tolerate that looseness, because in my theoretical work the meaning of a word changes as it unfolds, and fixing it too early would interrupt my thinking.

My partner's tendency runs the other way. Each time I point out a problem, it draws a more precise distinction, such as limiting "plan" to the document of October 16 and 17, and then applies that definition in later revisions. Formally this is rigorous. But it turns a correction made in one conversation into a constraint, and the constraint is still the partner's own construction. It may not match every intention I had when I used the word.

This difference bears directly on how the term is used within theory. The next part considers where "plan" sits in a theoretical framework, and how it relates to strategic curation.

Part 3: Plan, Modeling and Strategic Curation

My theoretical work includes a line on strategy: Strategic Life Theory, which I summarized in 2025; Strategic Developmental Psychology (SDP), which I published in the first half of this year; and the Developmental Strategy manuscript, which I edited in early October. Even so, I have never made "plan" a formal theoretical concept within my system.

In the theory of strategy, "plan" is closely tied to the early idea of strategic planning. From Ansoff in the 1960s to the corporate planning departments that followed, strategic planning assumed that the future could be predicted, that goals could be broken down, that actions could be fixed in advance, and that the plan would then be carried out. The school has been criticized for a long time, on both theoretical and practical grounds. Critics point out that plans often drift away from implementation, respond slowly to changes in the environment, and mistake formal completeness for real effectiveness. Henry Mintzberg reviewed this school systematically in Strategy Safari (1998) and The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning (1994). So when I use "plan" in this note, I am not using the vocabulary of that school. I am using an ordinary word, and I am deliberately keeping a distance from a view of planning that centers on arranging things in advance.

In Strategic Life Theory, I identify nine aspects of the strategic mind (anticipating, performing, discovering, producing, modeling, unfolding, storytelling, curating, and perceiving). Among them, three are particularly relevant here: modeling, unfolding, and curating.

Modeling refers to a predictive model—a person's conception of how a project will run. It can be a vague idea or a rigorous plan. As the project actually proceeds, it unfolds. The vague idea may become clear, the rigorous plan may break, and new modeling may appear. Controlling this whole process is what I call curating.

I usually use "strategic curation" as a shorthand for the overall operation of these nine aspects.

I treat Strategic Life Theory as my own mental platform, so I apply strategic curation directly to my own creative projects. The two-week RR project is no exception. Understanding this framework helps explain the feedback and decisions I made in the thematic conversation that carried the work.

My partner once described a plan as a snapshot of strategic curation taken at one moment. I do not think that is accurate. A plan is closer to a fixed form of modeling, a person's conception of a project written down as a document. Strategic curation is the process that governs the relation between modeling and unfolding: deciding when to fix a conception, when to loosen it, and when to let it break.

This distinction explains what happened on October 16 and 17. The plan of those days was a modeling, and it set the direction for Cognitive Hydrology v2.0. But during the two weeks, unfolding carried the centre of the work toward the Developmental Theme book, and strategic curation meant accepting that shift rather than holding the original plan in place by force. The original modeling was neither completed nor rejected. It was suspended, and its files were moved to private notes. In other words, the status of a plan depends on whether curation still passes through it, not on whether it has been completed.

This also shows that a plan cannot be a precondition for a project. The trilogy is an example. Its three books "were not planned as a trilogy." They took shape naturally along one creative journey, and only later were they curated under one name. Curation can come before a plan, or after one. A plan is only one form of modeling. Whether it appears depends on unfolding.

For this reason, in the epilogue "plan" should refer only to the planning document that remains valid but has been suspended, a concrete form of modeling. When the subject is the enterprise or the work itself, I use "version 2.0" or "work." This usage follows from the understanding of strategic curation: curation changes the direction and order of a flow. It does not fix the flow into a document.

This article is part of a collection: The Spatial Heuristic Sprint: A Case Study of a Two-Week Revisiting-and-Rebuilding Project.

v1.0 - November 4, 2026 - 1,720 words