Every Day Is Not Created Equal: Smart Schedules Give a Better Chance of Success
Balancing routines and flexibility for real life situations
It was the 1960s. Travel was mainly by bus or train, with airplanes an exotic luxury.
Members of my aunt’s family that she hadn’t seen in years called her to let her know that they’d be flying into New York City, where she lived. They had a 4-hour layover at the airport. Would she like to come meet them for a late lunch?
“I can’t. I’m doing my laundry that day,” she answered.
Fifty years later, this story is still retold in my family.
That is an example of rigid scheduling taken to the extreme.
You may have not-so-extreme examples of rigid scheduling in your own life:
- The self-imposed deadline that you skip meals and sleep to make.
- The “vacation” where every minute is accounted for on the agenda, that leaves you more tired at the end of it than when you started.
- The opportunities to do something with friends or family that you turn down because it’s the only time you can run errands.
The other end of the spectrum is having no schedule at all. How many times as a kid did you make no firm plans for the summer holiday? Then at the end of August, you realized most of the things you wanted to do “at some point” had never gotten done.
The same thing happens as an adult. If you make no plans, and just “play it by ear” or “see what I feel like doing”, you spend all your time trying to decide what to do. Very little ends up actually getting done.
Somewhere in the middle, between an inflexible plan and no plan at all, is the sweet spot. That allows you enough of a plan to get things done. But if something comes up — either an emergency or a better offer — you have space.
Be effective, not just productive
To understand what you can do in a day, you need to understand all of the variables at hand. Some of the things to consider:
- Creative tasks take more brainpower than administrative tasks
- You can only sustain effective deep focus for about half an hour without a break.
- Microbreaks (completely relaxing your body and mind for a few minutes) allow you to reset your focus without stopping what you’re doing
- Every time you switch tasks you lose about 15 minutes of focus
- Some people experience commitment pressure, or knowing that there is an upcoming appointment prevents them from deeply focusing
- People have daily cycles during which they are more or less productive at certain types of tasks
- Your focus will be affected by what’s happening with your family and the greater world.
Considering all of these things, it seems that the best solution is to time block. Set aside chunks of time when you know you will be able to get things done. Minimize the amount of task switching you do. Schedule your heaviest duty thinking for the times of day when you are most clear headed.
Plan to be less productive on some days
You also need to look at your big picture. As I mentioned in the title, all days are not created equally.
When I planned out this past week, I had only one task for Wednesday and one task for Thursday. There were no tasks for Friday.
That’s because the one task for Wednesday was getting my second Covid vaccination shot. The first one knocked me for a real loop. For about 24 hours, I had muscle aches, joint pains, nausea, and a headache. By all reports, the second shot side effects are worse than the first. So I fully expected to be down for two or three days.
Instead, I had almost no side effects, other than wanting to take a nap and then going to bed early. So I was able to add some tasks into my schedule for Thursday and Friday. But I made sure to keep them simple — editing, and choosing photos for an article. That way, I could be effective, even if I wasn’t productive.
I wasn’t up to my usual standards because of emotional stress and strain. I was waiting to hear back on the results from my dad’s doctor visit. I kept checking my phone to see if I’d somehow missed a call or text. As the time for check-in came and went, I started imagining progressively more dire scenarios.
The actual reason, that the doctors were running late, so their 1pm appointment didn’t happen until 5pm, was not something I considered. Which just proves how much my thinking was affected by my emotions.
Schedule recovery time
It seems counter productive, but one of the best ways to function most effectively is to schedule time in which you aren’t productive.
As Steven Kotler says in The Art of Impossible:
Burnout isn’t just extreme stress; it’s peak performance gone off the rails.… It’s hard for peak performers to relax. If momentum matters most, sitting still feels like laziness. And the more aligned with passion and purpose we become, the more “wasteful” time off starts to feel.
That time off is crucial to flush stress hormones from the brain and body. And it’s not enough to merely stop working. You need to have active recovery, that puts the brain into alpha or delta waves.
In other words, nothing with a screen! That puts your brain into beta waves.
Read a book, go for a walk in nature, take a sauna or epsom salt bath, practice yoga or tai chi, or meditate. Notice that these are all restful, relaxing activities. Then get a good night’s sleep.
You can also schedule time for flow state activities. For some people, this is a particular sport, such as skiing. I get into a flow state with board games. These flow state activities will boost your overall energy for your productive work.
And, because they are optional activities, they can be switched around. Say you’re planning on going skiing, because that’s a flow activity for you. But then a friend calls you up and asks if you’d like to go hiking.
Because you’re substituting one form of active recovery (flow activity) for another (walking in nature), you can easily shift your plans.
Conclusion
You need to find the sweet spot between rigid and inflexible scheduling and complete lack of scheduling.
There are many different factors to take into consideration when creating a schedule.
Create blocks of time in which to focus on a single task, without task switching. Schedule those blocks for when you are most effective at that particular task.
Plan to be effective on every day, even if you aren’t productive. Schedule less intensive tasks for the days when you are mentally, emotionally, or physically sub-par.
Schedule active recovery to keep from burning out. This keeps you effective and increases your productivity when you return to work.
Active recovery and flow activities can be switched around to provide additional flexibility in your schedule.
Ready to have a better tomorrow?
I’ve created a cheat sheet to help you increase your confidence and get control of your life. If you follow this daily, you will level up your life very quickly!
