Getting Back To Planning Your Days
It’s that time of year when, between taking holidays and the kids being off school, you’re out of whack with your usual routine. Planning your days goes out of the window and you either wing it day to day or run a different hastily put together schedule that merges all your changed responsibilities.
But, as time goes on, you find yourself becoming more and more frustrated. Initially you might not even realise why you feel frustrated, after all, you’re super busy keeping everyone else occupied and happy, ferrying people around, dealing with their issues.
And then… bang! That’s when it hits you…you’re not doing any of the things that are actually important to you and your self-care or self-fulfilment!
Containing The Overwhelm
As the holiday period got closer and in an effort to avoid overwhelming yourself, you shelved your own particular routine activities. Your hobby has been neatly put away, any meditation practice you had can’t now be fitted in without interruption and you haven’t attended your fitness class for weeks.
Is it any wonder that you feel frazzled and frustrated?
It Happens To Us All!
Whilst I haven’t got the responsibilities of looking after children while they’re off school, I found myself flummoxed and frustrated last week after having gotten out of routine. I’d been away on a week’s holiday with the family and when I came back, I found it really difficult to get myself back into my usual routine.
And so what did I do?
I just threw myself straight back into work, which essentially meant that I just dealt with everything as it came at me without assessing…
~ whether it was a priority,
~ whether it was actually something I should do or whether someone else needed to be doing it, or worse still,
~ whether it even needed to be done at all!
And all the while, I ignored my internal calling towards the important things I was neglecting. That is, the things that are important to me and my wellbeing.
The Effect of Neglecting Your Own Needs
As these important things began to slide down my endless list of to-dos, so my frustrations and anxieties increased. But as I’ve already said, I failed to see the connection between my heightened anxiety and my lack of focus because I was busy. Too busy to even think it seems!
So how often have you found yourself in this situation? The circumstances might be somewhat different – the demands on your time might be different to mine, but I bet the results and feelings are the same!
So what can you do to take back control and get your needs met too? The answer is…planning!
Yep, simple as that – you, and I, need a plan!
Planning Your Days and Weeks
So here’s what I did!
If you follow this blog regularly, then you already know that I have a list of goals for 2019, so this always needs to be my go-to to get me back to basics.
A goal without a plan is just a wish.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
For you it might be something different. For example it could be the list you were working on before the chaos set in, some kind of master list you keep manually or electronically that you haven’t visited recently or a journal where you note down your to-dos or important tasks that you want to get to.
Wherever, or whatever that list- or goal-keeping device sits on, you need to get it out now and refresh yourself about what you were working on before you started to feel frustrated and anxious.
The Review Process
Grabbing a nice cup of coffee, I set aside a couple of hours to go back over my goals and treated it as a monthly review. I keep my annual goals and reviews in Evernote so that I can return to them at any time regardless of the device I’m working on.
Logging into Evernote it became blatantly clear why I felt so far off track. I hadn’t done a full monthly review for two months.
When this happens, it’s so easy to go miles off plan. You think you’re doing ok because you’re busy, but the trouble is, you get busy on the wrong things, the easy things and the things that others want you to do. In other words, their priorities not yours.
Asking Yourself The Important Questions
So it was down to work.
I conduct my reviews as if I’m having a conversation with myself. I asked myself questions about what was going on when I went off track, what was going well or not-so-well and what do I want to do about it now?
It’s important to remember that when you’re doing a personal progress review, that it’s possible to make any changes you want. You can dismiss goals, add new ones or make adjustments. You’re not beholding to anyone except yourself and the purpose of your goals should be to make you happy in some way.
If your goals aren’t doing this, then it’s time to dismiss or adjust them for something that is better suited to your current circumstances.
Removing The Feelings of Disconnect
By systematically going through each goal, writing out how things had progressed…or not, as was the case with one or two of them, I was able to get myself grounded again.
I knew where I was and felt that I had context once again.
When you’re just working away on your goals without grounding yourself periodically, it’s easy to get disconnected with the reality of your progress.
Sometimes you’ve done more than you think but more usually, you’ve done less.
But, the main thing is that in not knowing where you’re at, it creates a feeling of anxiety, whereas knowing the bare, naked truth, even if it’s less than ideal gives you a feeling of being in control once again. You know where you’re starting from, and that is a powerful position to be in.
Creating A List of Actions
As I went through each of my goals, pondered the questions I’d set for myself and re-orientated myself to where I actually was, my next actions immediately became obvious to me and I wrote them down as I went along.
This proved to be easy to do. In fact, the difficultly was then to reign in my enthusiasm so that I didn’t get ahead of myself and set such a big list for the week ahead that it would become impossible to achieve and therefore de-motivating!
Planning Your Days Won’t Be Perfect
A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.
George S Patton
The list of goal-focused actions that I came up with gave me direction for the week ahead. The list wasn’t perfect, but, it was going to move me in the direction I wanted to go again, rather than take me even further off course.
Have I had a good week following my review? Well, it’s been better. I’ve known what I need to be working on, and even though, for all the reasons cited at the beginning of this blog I haven’t managed to get all the actions I identified ticked off my to-do list, I have at least made progress. And that feels so much better that where I was previously.
Now It’s Your Turn
If you’re feeling frustrated, anxious, off-kilter or otherwise unfulfilled with how you’re spending your time, you too need to take a step back and re-orientate yourself to the things that you really need and want to be doing. Planning your days will help you achieve that.
Because until you answer your inner calling, everything else will just be noise. Answering your calling will quell that noise and give you direction and most importantly peace of mind.
What to do next…
> Read another post – How To Choose Your Priorities
> Join my free private FB Group – Click now to join my closed (private) Facebook Group
> Catch up with me on social media – Facebook, YouTube, Twitter or Pinterest
> Sign up below 👇 for my weekly newsletter, keep up-to-date and get special offers!
