What To Do When Things Don’t Go As Planned
#2 Make rearrangements
Welcome to Day #24 of my 30-day writing challenge. Catch up on my journey here.
Yesterday was supposed to be my 24th consecutive day of writing for my 30-day writing challenge.
However…
I had a family emergency and couldn’t find the time (or energy) to write.
To be honest, I only remembered about the challenge when I laid my head on the pillow yesterday. I thought about getting up and quickly putting something together, but then I thought:
“How critical is missing one day in the midst of chaos after successfully publishing for 23 days straight?”
And then went to sleep.
My point: sometimes, as committed as you can be, you might find yourself in one of the following situations:
a) An emergency might come up, and you won’t be able to follow the schedule;
b) You weren’t able to meet every item on your to-do list because your to-do list was impossible to get done in a single day.
Sure, you need some self-awareness to understand if you are really overwhelmed or if you are being lazy. But don’t completely disregard the possibility that you are expecting too much from yourself if you aren’t able to meet the original plan.
Instead of putting yourself down, think of an actionable plan to turn things around.
This is how I do it:
#1 Don’t look at the micro — look at the macro
Take my example. Does skipping one day in my 30-day writing challenge really jeopardize the overall outcome of this experience?
It would if I skipped a full week, maybe. But one day?
I would much rather get a good night’s rest and pick up from where I left off today than pull a one-nighter for a Medium post just to show up.
I don’t have a big audience that is anxiously waiting to read my daily posts. I’m not doing any big announcements for the press. There is no big consequence to missing one post.
Always think macro before you think micro.
#2 Make rearrangements
Things didn’t go as planned? Rearrange the plans!
Think about how you can meet your goals in this new situation.
I said I would complete a 30-day writing challenge, and I’m going to complete a 30-day writing challenge. But instead of completing it on April 22nd, I will complete it on the 23rd. No biggie.
Alternatively, I could also publish two posts in a single day.
This is a simple problem to solve. When dealing with more complex situations, I always like to use a diagram to organize my ideas and rearrange things. You can craft one on a piece of paper or digitally on a Miro board.
After you’re done, be sure to put your activities in a task manager like Notion or Trello!
#3 Turn lemmons into lemmonade
Everything is an opportunity — even if you are just learning from mistakes.
But sometimes, you can make the best of situations. This post wasn’t even an idea yesterday morning. But because of my change of plans, I figured I’d make the most of it and write about how to deal with unexpected situations.
Are you sure there’s nothing you can take from your failed plans? :)
