Whether you’re time-blocking/time-boxing or listing your three most important tasks of the day, the cornerstone of an effective day relies on a common principle:
Have a plan.
There’s no question that having a plan for what you’re going to do, and when and where you’re going to do it, makes you more effective and efficient.
That said, this simple “hack” is not always so easy to implement in practice, especially for certain people.
The Challenge of Planning the Night Before
For women with perimenopause, or people with chronic health issues, the uncertain condition of your body and mind can feel like a huge obstacle to planning.
For many years, I made a practice out of tracking my energy patterns with my monthly cycle. I was able to predict with a fair degree of certainty what days I’d feel more tired and what days I’d have more capacity. This helped me plan better.
The shift into perimenopause disrupts those patterns and replaces the familiar with a realm of uncertainty. One friend described it accurately as being in a “constant state of limbo.”
You want to tackle that big project on your list, but how do you know if you’ll have the bandwidth to do it? Perimenopause creates an uncertain environment in the body and mind.
It might look like you’re procrastinating, but often that’s not the case. The issues are physiological and hormonal, not psychological.
The unpredictability of that limbo wreaks havoc on the nervous system and can make planning your day a challenge.
How do you plan when you don’t know the resources you’ll have available to you?
3 Strategies for Planning When Your Body and Mind Are Unpredictable
Here are 3 strategies that I’ve been using in my workouts and my work to help me plan better even when I’m uncertain about what my mind and body capacity will be.
(1) Keep the Container
Don’t throw out the structure of your day just because you’re not sure how you’ll feel. Keep the time block for the activity even if you need to adjust the nature of the activity.
For example, my day starts with a workout no matter what. Whether that workout is going to be a heavy lifting day or something less intense might depend on my body’s conditions in the moment, but the time is blocked regardless.
The same goes for my work blocks.
Think of the time blocks of your day like cooking pots. You don’t throw out your pots just because you’re not sure what you’ll make. You’ll still need the pots for whatever ingredients you have on hand.
(2) Scale As Necessary
Once you’re in the container, do what you can do.
In a workout, you can always scale back by using lighter weights or modifying the exercise. When my knee was immobilized earlier this year, I couldn’t do conventional deadlifts. But I was able to do straight leg Romanian Deadlifts. As I got more strength back, I was slowly able to increase the range to rack pulls, even before I could do full deadlifts or squats.
The same applies to work. If the project you wanted to tackle requires more bandwidth than you have available, look at how you can break it up and tackle a small part of it.
Baby steps will help you feel like you accomplished something and give you some momentum.
(3) Plan Pivot Options
Sometimes, a big task can’t be broken up, or you simply don’t have the inner resources available to take on even part of it. In that case, it helps to have a list of alternate options that you can choose from.
If your list of “3 essential tasks” is like the starting line-up of your day plan, think of the pivot options as the “bench players.”
It helps to have these alternates planned in advance so that you’re not spinning in indecision about what to do when your brain and body can’t get onboard with the primary plan.
Sometimes I have a great plan when I get to the gym, but the machines I planned to use are being used, or my body just isn’t on board, even if I scale. If I have another circuit planned, it’s easy to adjust and do that other circuit instead without wasting time and energy on completely overhauling the plan.
The same approach works with work: instead of planning just one task for a time block, have back-up tasks ready “on the bench” to call up if necessary.
This means that you’ll end up planning more than you can reasonably do in a day. To avoid falling into the trap of despair when you don’t get it all done, it’s important to remind yourself that the goal is not to do it all, but to give you a choice in the moment.
It’s like a menu: you’re not eating everything on it; instead, you’re choosing what to eat based on the condition of your mind and body in the moment.
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