Growing up, my father would drill me each week with a barrage of developmental questions. ‘Have you written down your goals, Abi?’ ‘What are you working towards, Abi?’ ‘Don’t you want to be one of the 3%, Abi?’

I found the questions stressful, and not just because I was a teenager, when everything is an agony of hormones and parental embarrassment. I didn't like to think about the future, let along write it down. I was ambitious, but my ambitions were to get into the best university, see the world, fall in love, maybe write a book…

I had friends who knew exactly what they wanted to do. One of them went on to live out her detailed plan year on year and is now, admittedly, doing amazingly well. Perhaps there is something to it. But my brain didn't work like that, and however much I tried to think of something that would keep me in Portuguese holidays and comfortable suburban housing, I just couldn't bring myself to pick one thing and stick to it. I wanted to have an impact; I just couldn't decided what I wanted it to be.

I tried work experience in advertising, marketing, PR, and law. I found things to love in all of them, and learnt a great deal. But rather than help me focus, they just perpetuated my problem of being both unable and unwilling to decide.

It was perhaps inevitable that I chose to study History at university. Great degree; limited practical application. When it came to getting a job I was jammy enough to immediately land at an amazing company. I certainly didn't plan it. If you had told my teenage self I would soon be working for Microsoft, she would have looked at you blankly before sticking her nose back in her (paper) book.

But up until last weekend, this lack of strategy caused a continual nagging voice in the back of my head. ‘Where are you going in life, Abi?’ ‘What is your goal, Abi?’ ‘Write it down, Abi.’ I knew I was going somewhere, and I knew I was pro-actively making a choice with each move. But I hadn't yet found that ‘one thing’ that would bind it all together in a plan-worthy meta-narrative. I felt like I was doomed to failure, no matter how well I was doing in the moment, because I couldn't focus on one thing. I wanted to try it all, and found the choice of any one, forever, just too daunting.

Do Lectures last weekend gave me an alternative. It helped to challenge that little voice.

I met a lady who, when asked ‘what do you do’, replied ‘I used to be a musician, then I wrote a book, then I tried my hand at business. And I’m also a mum’. Before I engaged my brain I rather rudely replied ‘didn’t you want to focus on anything?’ She looked at me, smiled, and explained. ‘Not really, no. I followed my passions as they evolved. I’m interested in lots of things.’

I was surprised. I shrugged it off.

Later that day we had a talk by Rosa Park, editor of Cereal magazine. She described the events leading up to her current work (and city) as a ‘meandering journey’. She had moved from role to role, country to country. She had gone where her energy was, trying her hand at Fashion PR, writing, to now co-founding a magazine that combines her loves of travel and beautiful imagery. She quoted Steve Jobs:

‘You can’t connect the dots looking forward you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something: your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path.’

Jobs famously studied calligraphy, unofficially and off his own back. He had the time; he had dropped out of his college course; dropped off of the plan. In his words:

’If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.’

I'm not saying that plans and goals are bad. I know you are more likely to succeed with both. But it was liberating to hear that successful people had been and still were in the same situation as me. It helped me to see that just because you are not a goal-writer does not mean you cannot be in the 3%. Just because you have numerous interests doesn't mean you must force yourself to choose one.

Stef Lewandowski, in his Do talk, described his approach to work as cyclical; he creates something every day until one emerges that he wants to focus on obsessively for a while, before starting the process over again. I like this idea. It combines serendipity with diverse interests. It enables you to be ambitious without being singular.

I still crave a grand narrative. I'm inpatient to see how everything adds up to achieve my impact in life. I’d love to have a goal to work towards, and know I would be more focused if I did. But I'm no longer quite so stressed about it.

Instead of straining my brain for an artificial (single) goal, I'm going to embrace my passions in their multiplicity. I'm going to continue to go where my interests lie, and move and create a little every day.

Perhaps that is its own form of success, after all.