Refocused Living

Last night I read Steve Pavlina’s fabulous post on making great plans, then failing to execute those plans. While the post itself didn’t have any new insights for me – it kinda confirmed what I already knew about myself – it really got me thinking about how it took me so long to create a planning (and execution) method that works perfectly for me.

I’m one of those rare people who love to create plans for everything. If you can name any area in your life that you can have control over, I guarantee you that I have created a mission on how to improve that aspect of my life at some point. (Okay, so maybe I’m a little bit nutty in that respect, but that’s okay. )

Day to day planning is what I focus on now. To me, having a productive day is incredibly important. If I go to bed with a lackluster feeling, I’m almost certain to wake up in the morning carrying over some residual emotions from that. Or vice versa – a great day yesterday means a great start today. Planning has a lot to do with these feelings, obviously.

At first, I would plan out my days as if I was a productivity robot, able to burst through tasks effortlessly with a little time to spare. Back to back objectives with a little breathing room made up my schedules. I would think to myself, “this is what it means to be productive. This is what it means to schedule your time wisely.” Of course, I now know that life doesn’t work like that.

Something would always happen that would tear my plans to shreds. The task at hand would be completed way before my estimated time… not necessarily a bad thing. Or worse, the task at hand would take up way too much time, sometimes several hours more than I would have guessed. This happened way too often than not, and it often pushed other necessary, urgent tasks to the next day. While that would be okay once in a while, the cumulative effect wasn’t too pretty. I began to feel burnt out and stressed to the max.

Is it human nature to think that we’re more efficient workers than we really are? I’d like to think so. We all want to believe we’re great at barreling through tasks at a breakneck speed, able to conquer anything that we put in front of ourselves. The real world and our lives don’t work like this, however. We’re not perfect machines; we’re human beings. We plan for computers, but we behave like primates.

After these realizations, I began to plan in a different way. I had to be more flexible, more conscious in the realization that I can’t possibly execute my plans perfectly if I tried to box myself in a tight schedule day in and day out.

With a little trial and error, I worked out two planning guidelines that I use to allocate time to activities:

1. Only assign time amounts to those activities where time is the only requirement. There are certain things that I do that merely require I put in the necessary time. Piano practice is one of these. No matter if I choose to practice for one hour or three hours, I need to simply put in the time. Results will happen regardless, as long as I’m focused on the task at hand.
2. Schedule wide open spaces for activities that are creativity based. I love writing these blog posts and sharing my ideas with the world. Sometimes words flow effortlessly and I can create an inspired post at an incredible speed. At other times I decide to go at a slower pace, deliberately crafting my sentences and carefully choosing how I want to convey my message. These are the activities that I choose not to assign a time to.

Before I started planning like this, I would assume every task would be a #1 task. Somehow my brain thought that any objective could be assigned an allotted time amount and I would be able to finish that objective within that time frame. How wrong I was!

It’s true that some tasks will only require you to pump in the time. Running on the treadmill at the gym for 30 minutes will never, ever take 29 minutes or 31 minutes. Always 30. In order to knock off that exercise goal, all you have to do is put in the time. Easy. The same goes for any activity where time is the main measurable aspect of accomplishment, such as practicing a musical instrumental or studying.

But what about creative endeavors? It took me a while to realize that not all creative pursuits are made equal. There are instances where it’s fairly easy to finish up a project within a short amount of time. There are other even greater instances where more time is needed then you’d think. Countless times I’ve started writing blog posts that I think will only take me an hour to write and edit, but wind up being over 3 to 4 hours (or more) start to finish. Note that there’s nothing wrong with this – just the fact that it can and does happen.

Looking at planning through the nature of the tasks helped me create better plans that I can actually carry out. Try this method of planning out yourself. Plan for the human being that’s going to be carrying out your schedule – yourself.

Questions to ask yourself: Think of one of your current goal. Are you having trouble breaking up that goal into manageable chunks of time? What if you set aside one afternoon and freely worked on a section of that goal, without a time limit? Would you get more work or less work done? Why or why not?

I’m the type of person who’s always working on several large scale projects at once. One of the things I’ve discovered is that when I think of my goals in terms of deadlines instead of goals, I often achieve better results in a quicker amount of time. And when you’re dealing with several massive projects at once, this translates into a huge time saver.

It sounds like a weird, half-semantics quibble, right? A “deadline” vs. a “goal”? Why does the word choice matter? To me, the word choice (and as an extension, the word meanings) make all of the difference. I like to think of a deadline as a goal that cannot be changed – a deadline is something more finalized, a goal is still an aspiration up in the air. Turning a goal into a deadline can be used to motivate you to take action. Let’s get into a little deeper detail.

We all know what a goal is. A goal is something that you’re working towards – a final product, a finished masterpiece. But because of the nature of the word “goal,” we think of goals as being more lofty and something that isn’t exactly concrete. And the word “goal” is so vague, as well; the word “goal” can be stretched to apply to nearly anything. Visiting the South Pole can be a world traveler’s goal, but a college student’s sole goal in life might be to make it through a week’s worth of classes without feeling burnt out.

A deadline, however, isn’t lofty. It’s specific. A deadline is a deadline – a dead line. When something is dead, it’s absolutely dead. Its status will be forever unchanging: no longer alive, no longer up for discussion. A line is something that’s concrete; a line is immovable, it’s as clear as black and white. A deadline, therefore, is something that’s forever unchanging – a line that cannot be crossed under any circumstance.

We often think of “deadlines” in various ways, so I’ll do a little bit of clarifying. Here are a few different types of deadlines, with definitions:

• Daily deadlines. Things that you can reasonably expect to be done by the end of the day. An example of a daily deadline would be writing up a new blog post for your personal development blog.
• Weekly deadlines. Things that you can reasonably expect to be done by the end of the week, sometimes sooner (possibly within the time frame of three to six days.) An example of a weekly deadline would be creating a series of five blog posts on a topic you’re passionate about.
• Biweekly deadlines. Things that you can reasonably expect to be done within a time frame of two weeks. These deadlines generally have a bit more depth than a weekly deadline. You might be able to accomplish a good chunk of a two week project within a week, but that extra time you give yourself could be the difference between “good” and “outstanding.”

I hesitate to go any farther than biweekly, because monthly deadlines more or less fall along the lines of goals and goal setting. Things that take a month or longer can  be broken down into daily, weekly, and biweekly deadlines.

I know what you’re thinking at this point. “You just defined what goals are and instead swapped the word ‘deadline’ for the word ‘goal.’ How is this any different?!”

It’s different because it makes me feel different. It should make you feel different, too.

You could have a goal that you need to walk for 30 minutes a day. That’s a fabulous goal, on the outside. But what if instead of referring to your walk as a goal, you referred to it as a deadline? Think about how you would phrase that deadline – “The deadline for walking 30 minutes must be done by 6:00 PM CST today, no exceptions.” Now you created a sense of drive and need solely with your words. With no choice but to either complete your objective or fail, you’re much more likely to be motivated to take concrete action.

Deadlines pick up where goals leave off. Goals may be what you wish your future to be like, but deadlines transform those goals into realistic action steps. How will you ever expect to achieve your goals if you don’t complete the deadlines you set for yourself?

* * * * *

A deadline is like a goal that’s cast in stone. How different would your life be if you thought of goals being as unchanging deadlines instead of wishes and dreams you aspire towards?

Practical application: Pick one goal that you’ve been mulling over that you want to accomplish. Choose an aspect of that goal to work on, and set daily, weekly, and biweekly deadlines for accomplishment. Be crystal clear with your planning and deadlines, and work towards competing those objectives, no matter what.