For a few months throughout this year, I thought I would be able to get away with a relaxed approach to a lot of activities. From blogging to working out, I figured I’d make the time for what was important and only allow the occasional distraction to get in the way. Of course, this optimistic perspective was often thwarted by the reality that distractions are good at their job. Days would pass by as I skipped runs during marathon training, no projects were progress, and the only thing getting done were bounties in Destiny 2. Eventually, I got the ball rolling with a better approach, this bold new idea called “planning.”
Training Plans and the Start of a Better Trend
As the months passed and my marathon training stagnated, I knew I needed to make a change or it was going to be a painful 26.2 miles. I sat down and made a daily workout plan to follow from the day to the marathon.
There were of course on the fly alterations, days where I was feeling hurt or other plans required swapping some days around, but I was still doing much better than before.
Prior to a real plan, the biggest problem I was having was getting myself to do specific workouts, like running hills and paced tempo runs. Days I wanted to do these workouts coincidentally landed on days I just really didn’t feel like running. Once a schedule was put together, it was easy to force myself out the door knowing I’d committed to doing so already.
Daily Life and Weekly Reviews
The fitness realm was only the start for establishing better plans. The only way I’ve been able to consistently get what I want done in a day is to write it all out.
Days where I feel the most productive are those in which I set up a loose plan of what needs to be done. Even better are those in which I estimate the time to actually get those things done. It doesn’t matter if I wake up late or have something take a bit longer, I tend to get through most of my list if I just take the time to write it all out.
One of the few trials I’ve stuck to since has been the writing of a weekly review. In an effort to help plan ahead, an addition I’ve made since the trial has been coming up with a single focus for the following week. It can be something specific like getting my Illinois driver’s license after moving or something a bit more general like writing for fifteen minutes per day. Either way, there’s a specific plan that needs to be completed.
Plans and Creativity
For a while, I’ve held onto a false belief that too much rigidity would get in the way of creative actions like writing. This is a bad habit I fall into from time to time, assuming I’ll make the time when needed. As we saw for the last few months, that time never came until I made it.
While I think too much structure can inhibit creation, as the trial format was growing dull leading to my more freeform posts, planning can help to keep the wheel spinning. With this blog, I didn’t set aside any time to write, leading to a lengthy hiatus. While the broad topic posts gave me more freedom of subjects, the trial structure gave me the more important directive to write every week.
Looking ahead to a return to trials, as I plan for 2022, I think I want to pursue a similar approach to CGP Gray’s “Themes.” Planning for not only a trial for a given month, but a possible tangential idea to accompany the new habit or routine. With of course a possible unrelated post, but one at least planned ahead to be released at a given time.
The whole point of switching to writing on broad topics was to build a backlog of posts to avoid the very problem I’d found myself. Instead, I have a backlog of half finished drafts and ideas, none of which are ready to be published, something I ran into already this week when I opened the planned post to find it still had notes and questions to be answered.
Trying Out Before Buying In 