You made your plan. Now what?
Well, if you feel like I do today, you mostly ignore it and just try to stay awake through the important parts.
Yep, you don’t have to follow the plan.
You don’t have to feel guilty about it.
You don’t even have to look at it.
You scored a victory just by making the plan.
Often times, that little victory gives you the momentum to do the next thing on your list, and the momentum builds and builds until you get to the end of the day, surprised at what you accomplished. Without the plan, it wouldn’t have happened. But even with it, it might not have. So you express your gratitude to the universe, and hope that tomorrow is just as good.
Sometimes, you’re going strong, but the world is determined to shut you down. Maybe a sticky problem at work throws you off track. An emergency comes up, or your kid calls from school because they’re sick. Some things just get in the way of life. That’s ok. You do your best, recover if possible, and make a plan for tomorrow to get back on track.
Maybe you didn’t plan well enough. Maybe the work project took way longer than you thought it would. Or you scheduled something mentally challenging for that dead zone after lunch when you can’t think very well. Or you forgot to write down the Dr’s appointment you had, and only barely remembered in time, leaving your plans in disarray. So, you learn what you can so your plans will be better in the future, and make a plan for tomorrow to get back on track.
Sometimes, the plan gets you going, but you fizzle out half way. You give yourself permission to eat a cookie before lunch, and before you know it you’ve skipped lunch, eaten a bunch of junk food, and just want to sit around watching movies all night. Or you get lax on a work problem, never quite finish it, and then leave feeling dissatisfied and grouchy for the evening. Sometimes you can recover from this by doing the little things to get back on track. Pick up your laundry on the way home, do the dishes, and magically you’re feeling better, so it’s easy to make a plan for tomorrow. Sometimes you just let it all go, make the plan for tomorrow, and get a good night’s sleep so you can get back on track.
But sometimes, just making the plan is the day’s victory. And you know that going in, so your plan has stuff like “eat junk food”, and “watch a movie”. I had a day like that about a month ago. I was sick, and had been sick for a week. I’d been fighting it pretty hard, doing my best to keep all the balls in the air. But I could tell, I could feel that I was just delaying the inevitable. And the inevitable was that I had to let the sickness run it’s course.
So I planned on doing nothing.
But I still planned.
And that meant I would plan the next day. And the next. As I got better, I brought back the productive stuff. And it felt good to gradually get more effective, day by day.
Right now, planning the day is something I can do, even when I’m as sick as a dog.
You can too.