Changing Plans Through Disruption

As of this recording, Daylight Savings Time was last week. This means we ‘Sprung Forward’ and when we woke up the clock was one hour ahead of our body. 

Now that’s problematic for getting an adequate amount of rest. If you go to bed at your normal time, and wake up at your normal time, you actually get one hour less of sleep. This is exactly what happened to me, and I felt it.

I woke up and brushed my teeth right away like usual, and while brushing processed the fact that it seemed dark out and that was because of Daylight Savings. It’s something I had forgotten about and didn’t plan for… So I had a decision to make: Execute my day as scheduled or get more sleep and adjust.

Thinking through what I had planned for the morning, and weighing that against my sleep standards, I chose to get another half hour of sleep.

Here’s the thing about the plans we make: They’re our best attempt at organizing our day given the level of awareness we had when we made it. And while forgetting about Daylight Savings Time is an obvious oversight, there are other things that come up every single day that disrupt your plans too.

Life is inherently unpredictable, we can’t foresee everything that will demand our attention and we can’t plan for it all, so here are two ways to accommodate for that.

First, you can try to hedge for unpredictability. Instead of planning yourself back to back all day, give in an hour of buffer. That way when things take longer than expected or new things come up, you have time set aside to catch the spillover. Fortunately, based on my gentle plans for that Daylight Savings Sunday, I had the space to afford an extra half hour of sleep without compromising other commitments.

Second, you can incorporate the new information into a new plan. Who’s to say you can’t make a new schedule when circumstances have changed? In fact, I think you should! Again, you can only make decisions from your present level of consciousness… So if you have more to consider then you should adjust your plan to reflect that.

It’s a classic example of living out my favorite quote of all time by Maya Angelou: “Do your best until you know better, then when you know better, do better.” 

So that’s what I did - Rather than starting my day behind schedule, I redid my schedule so that I could stay right on track with the new plan.

And I encourage you to do the same the next time you notice your day is getting away from you. Rather than letting it fall apart and resolving to try again tomorrow, you can still salvage the day and fill it with what’s most important moving forward.

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