What creating an actual “Life Plan” taught me

First, if you haven’t seen the Netflix Original “The Little Prince”, stop what you’re doing and go watch it. This article will still be here when you get back. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1754656/
One of the opening scenes of the film depicts a single mom so completely absorbed by a corporate mindset that she treats her own child like an adult, and presents her with her “Life Plan.” Every single minute of every day, of every month of the year, meticulously organized on a massive fold-out bulletin board. Sounds ridiculous of course, but the way it’s presented, they paint corporate America to be some dark, ominous, mechanical way of life that everyone must conform to. Which isn’t the case, but that’s a whole other article.
This scene, and the idea of a “Life Plan,” stuck with me for months after first seeing the film. There’s just something about trying to schedule every single little moment of your life… before it ever happens. If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll know that mere moments after the mom introduces the “Life Plan” to her daughter, an airplane propeller rips through their dining room wall, bounces around their house, and smashes into the “Life Plan.”
Regardless, I’ve been on a quest recently to find more free time to put toward writing journal entries, learning to code, coming up with ideas for YouTube videos, writing a novel, or even finding time for a little bit of exercise. And what better way to find the spare minutes of my day-to-day life… than creating my very own “Life Plan”?
Just a note, this is just a tad bit crazy, so when I first did it, I set all my events to ‘private’ so my friends, family, and coworkers couldn’t see that I was actually scheduling things like breakfast and when I should take a shower.
I just started at the beginning. When I first wake up, what do I typically do, and about how long does that take? So I started breakfast around 6am, commuting to work around 7am, then working 8am-6pm, then dinner, shower, bed. I left my normal work appointments on my calendar as well, but I just added an all-encompassing “Life Plan” on top of existing calendar items I already had.
Before the “Life Plan”, I would only schedule very important things. Things like meetings for work, or critical deadlines I had to hit. Now that my “Life Plan” blankets my entire calendar, it not only forces me to look at each item and decide if it really is important (or even needs to be there, for that matter), but it also quickly reveals all my spare minutes.
For me, I was able to add 4 hours to my week just by getting up a few minutes earlier on weekday mornings. Before my “Life Plan”, I had a very long to-do list that felt more like a wishlist. Things I wanted to better myself by doing, like writing more and writing more often, or learning a new skill like web development. But all these things fell aside because I “didn’t have time”.
Enter “Life Plan”. I’m a former night owl, turned early bird by my wonderful wife who often has to be up well before sunrise for her job. I felt like if I was going to find any time, it’d be earlier rather than later. I decided to dedicate one hour to each of my wishlist items for each weekday. My calendar looked amazing and more colorful than ever.
Enter airplane propeller. My first week of trying to wake up early was a total flop. My one-year-old got sick on Sunday night, delaying my plans to go to bed early, and several hours of interruptions later, I finally went to sleep. I slept through my alarm, and barely made it to work on time. That set my entire week up to follow suit. Things kept coming up that preventing me from adhering to my “Life Plan.”
Week two was better. I was finally able to start dedicating some time to the things I wanted to do. Some items fell through the cracks, but I was starting to get the the hang of it.
I’ve been using my “Life Plan” for 30 days now, and it’s worked in some ways and failed in others. The biggest takeaway for me was learning to prioritize. Some of the items that I thought I wanted to dedicated time to doing turned out to be not that important, so they got replaced. It really cleared up priorities for me and taught me when and how to make time for the important things in life.
