Day 216: On Accounting for Flexibility in Your Plans
Another drawback of daily plans is that they lack flexibility. They deprive the person of the chance to make choices along the way, so the person feels locked into a rigid and grinding sequence of tasks. Life rarely goes exactly according to plan, and so the daily plans can be demoralizing as soon as you fall off schedule. With a monthly plan, you can make adjustments. If a delay arises one day, your plan is still intact.
I’m a fan of daily routines: writing a specific number of words, sticking to the same number of consumed calories, or learning the same number of words in a foreign language every day.
However, at the same time, having experienced on more than a few occasions that life often doesn’t go exactly according to the plan and disruptions are bound to happen, I account for some flexibility in my plan. This way, when I mess up one day, it doesn’t have to affect my entire progress.
For example, whenever I’m tweaking my caloric intake, I try to focus more on what happens during an entire week or month than any specific day. This way, if I mess it up one day by eating too little or too much, it doesn’t matter because I can make up for it the next day or a week later. Granted, it carries the risk of making regular exceptions and setting a precedent, so it’s important to always plan exactly when you’re going to adjust for a day of variance
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Recently I set for myself a goal to write 10 daily entries for this book for 10 days so that after the end of this sprint, I will have written entries for 100 days, or almost 30% of the book.
If I were to only count it as successful if I stuck to writing 10 entries every day, without allowing myself any kind of flexibility, I’d have failed on the eighth day, which I spent outdoors. However, knowing that such a disruption would happen, I wrote 14 entries the day before my trip and 6 in the early morning before my departure.
Thanks to accounting for flexibility, I avoided the demoralizing effect of dropping the ball, and after 10 days, I had also completed my goal of writing 100 entries in total.
When setting new routines and goals, allow yourself some flexibility, too. If you have a daily quota, don’t immediately count it as a failure if you don’t perform it for one day. Work a little more for the next several days and instead of falling off the bandwagon, you’ll still achieve your original goal.