The problem with planning
How are you this Wednesday? I am very much looking forward to the school holidays starting on Friday. We won’t be going away at this stage but I am looking forward to the pace slowing down a little with less extra curricular activities and less weekend sport for a few weeks.
This week on the blog I published a review of the book Four Thousand Weeks – Time and How to Use It by Oliver Burkeman. It is not your typical time management book. There are no quick hacks, no schedules to follow, and no secrets to optimising your focus.
If you are feeling constantly overwhelmed by all you have to do, or think that if you could just get more organised you would be able to get everything done, then I highly recommend reading Four Thousand Weeks – Time and How to Use It by Oliver Burkeman. Burkeman doesn’t have a magic wand that will help you with your problems but he can give you a perspective that can help you change the way you feel about them.
You can read my full review here, but today I wanted to share with you Burkeman’s thoughts on the problem with planning.
The real problem isn’t planning. It’s that we take our plans to be something they aren’t…..all a plan is – all it could ever possibly be – is a present-moment statement of intent. It’s an expression of your current thoughts about how you’d ideally like to deploy your modest influence over the future. The future, of course, is under no obligation to comply.
I know I have caused myself stress, frustration and anger when I have missed my own deadlines for the plans I have made. I am still going to continue to plan because this is a key way that I make conscious choices about how I will spend my finite time but I am going to work on the attachment I have to the plan. And this is where Burkeman contends that the concept of Cosmic Insignificance Therapy comes into it:
To remember how little you matter, on a cosmic timescale, can feel like putting down a heavy burden that most of us didn’t realise we were carrying in the first place.
This is a freeing concept. Does it matter if the newsletter goes out a day later than usual? Does it matter that I am temporarily out of stock with Adapt Drinks? Cosmic Insignificance Therapy doesn’t mean that what we do doesn’t matter at all – because it can and it does. The power of this therapy is to help us change the way we look at what we are already doing.
Cooking a good meal for the family can matter just as much as anything else we do! We are most likely overlooking how much good work we are doing and how well we are spending some of our time because we have a skewed view that to spend time well is to be spending it on something of grandeur. Cosmic Insignificance Therapy tells us that even if we were doing something grand, in a couple of generations it will all be forgotten just like the dinner we cooked last night.
So as issues arise today, yes focus on them to resolve them but also spend some time reflecting on all the good you did today too!
Have a great rest of the week.
Nic
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