The Super-Power of a Plan

Flexibility is great – and which Mum doesn’t need it in bucketloads? How else would we deal with the constant curveballs and change of plans (and pants)?

Speaking of which, I’ve always been a ‘fly by the seat of my pants’ kind of person, although, what does that expression even mean? Was there an extremely easy-going person once who flew by the seat of her pants? And if so, did this really make her more easy-going? But I digress…

I may not be very supple on a pilates mat, but I’m as flexible as they come when it comes to plans… as happy with a change of plans as I am with last-minute ones, although my personal favourite is no plans whatsoever.

After all: “Blessed are the flexible, for they will not be broken.”

And yet, I’m learning that although goals and plans don’t need to be set in stone, a total lack of them is a sure-fire way to miss what’s truly important in life. On this, it was really very interesting to see, in a recent survey that was done with Mums on Home Tester Club across South Africa, that only half of us set New Year’s resolutions this year. Now, either we were completely preoccupied with other stuff on the ‘big-day’ OR we have forgotten about the power that we unleash when we set goals and then build a plan to get out there and bring them to life.

So, after years of chasing the urgent things and finding less and less time to squeeze in the really important ones, I’m planning on planning a lot more. To try and get better at planning, I asked a few friends who really seem to get this right. And this is what they said to get me started…

1. Plan to plan

As I wake up, a hundred urgent things rush at me (a few small humans too). I can easily go through a whole day, week or month feeling like my time is not my own – busy, busy, busy and yet having not really achieved much.

Yet the great writer and philosopher C.S. Lewis believed that only lazy people are busy people. Ouch! He felt that by ‘lazily’ abdicating the essential work of planning and setting goals, of failing to do the work of intentionally directing our time toward that which we truly value, other people will naturally do it for us. And then, we will typically find ourselves frantically trying to satisfy a half dozen different demands on our time as we try desperately to stave off the disaster of disappointing someone.

Setting aside an hour last week to really review my life and time felt far more liberating than I had imagined it would. I started by listing my roles in life, then listing the responsibilities that flow out of these roles. Finally, I took a long hard look at my weekly and monthly calendar and started the process of making my diary better reflect what is important to me, not what is simply ‘urgent’.

The big idea here: make a plan to plan. Set aside time regularly to do this:

• Make time daily to reflect on the day just passed and ensure you know exactly what you’re doing with the next 24 hours.
• Make time monthly and also weekly to look over the next month and week of your life – giving you a bigger picture of what you’re walking into.
• Make space for big reviews of your time every few months (maybe twice a year). This would be a lengthier time to reflect on your life goals and rhythms.

      2. Put the big rocks in first

If you ever try to fit a number of different-sized stones, rocks and sand into a jar, you will find you have to start by putting in the big ones, then the smaller ones fit around those, and the sand (the really tiny stones) will fill all the gaps thereafter. This way, you maximize the space in the jar and don’t waste any of it. The same principle works with our time. Instead of starting with all the small urgencies and then trying to make space for the really big important things, planning ahead empowers us to put in our ‘big rocks’ first. The smaller things must fit around these. And they do!

In my own journey with this, I’m discovering that unless I’ve booked time in my diary to do the important things, they will always get shoved aside for something else in the moment.

Here are some of my big rocks: a date with my hubby, time with each of my kids, time to regularly sharpen my mind and exercise, uninterrupted patches to do my most important work, and now, planning time too!

3. Plan to say ‘no’

The best part of all of this planning, has been that I’m finding it so much easier to say no to things that are other people’s priorities, not mine. Being a flexible person, and a chronic people pleaser, I’ve always tried unusually hard to work around other people and their plans. Often at the cost of my own energy and preferences. Now that I actually have planned what I’m doing next week, and put things that are priorities to me in there, there’s less space and opportunity for other well meaning people to hi-jack my time!

When someone asks to see me next Tuesday at 3, I flip open my diary and say, ‘I have something planned there.’ No need to tell them that I am leaving work early that day to watch my kid play soccer.  See, planning allows me to grab my time before anyone else can.

I’ve got a long way to go on this, but I have realized that if I fail to plan, I plan to fail. That’s something I want less of in my life.

Where are you on this journey? If you’re an expert planner, why not comment below and add some tried-and-tested tips of your own to help the rest of us! Or perhaps you have some great planning apps or tools that really work?

Lastly, if you live in Jozi or Durbs, then make sure you try and get over to one of our Mumspiration Live events happening this year to hear how the super busy Devi Sankaree Govender from Carte Blanche goes about planning for more in her extraordinary life .

Written by: Julie Williams – Lifestyle Editor