You’re the Pilot and Navigator. [Proactive Life Planning One Day at a Time] [Part 1 of 2]
Keeping stock of your time and energy should be as important as keeping track of your money. In this two part micro-series, I want to share with you some of the ways I’m reclaiming my life through increasing my productivity and planning my life proactively.
I have budgeted on and off for years (as I think most of us have to one degree or another), even if they were just some sketchy mental calculations of how long it would take me to save up for a new gaming console or a how many Transformers action figures I could buy with that month’s wages. While having a rough idea is better than no idea, I made a change a few years ago to invest in a budgeting app called YNAB that completely altered the way I see my money. If you are like me and budget every last dollar and cent, then you will really appreciate the rest of this article because it will make total sense for the rest of your life.
Similarly, if you’re treating your income like a ten year old who just found fifty bucks, then this will rock your world, too.
But first, we must take our discussion down a precipitous side road to understand the notion of resource allocation. (“Joy!” I hear you shriek.)
For me the concept of time allocation conjures up images of “time hacking” YouTubers. However, this stuff ain’t new. Day planning and it’s millennial cousin, “time blocking” have their roots primarily within the arena of business where wasted time (especially in high volume production lines such as car manufacturing) costs money. Sometimes, HUGE amounts of money. Who knew stay at home mums with six children weren’t the only people with time issues! As a teacher, my day is mapped out in pen and planned from session to session with what I will teach and what I expect the children to come away with. However, it shouldn’t stop there.
Work is full of planning. For a reason.
The purpose of a journal, planner or daybook is to transcribe the fleeting thoughts of plans onto hard copy. Joshua Foer would call it cheating, but let’s get real. For all the stuff I have accumulated in my day planner, it would take an enormous number of memory palaces (familiar geographic locations such as the family home or your route to work that are used as a memory tool) to store it all. As I mentioned, teaching requires planning, so too, the doctor’s office uses specialised software and so does just about every business. If you’re going to apply for a business loan, your business plan is exactly that – a plan. Productivity is the aim of the game with the goal leading towards profitability.
However, when we get home from our day job, what happens? Most of our plans are left at the office except for maybe thoughts of what to eat for dinner, so we can unwind and vegetate in front of the television or mow the lawn then sit down with a beer. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with any of those things. However, I want you to ask yourself this: Are these activities what you planned for or are you just reacting to a lack of planning? I ask myself the exact same questions.
Our weeks have been planned for thousands of years.
A basic example of deliberate life structure is the seven day week. Why seven days and not a repeating set of three? Why any repeating days at all? Over four thousand years ago, the ancient Babylonians noted that the moon took approximately 28 days (they rounded down from 29.5 days) to go through all of its phases. Then they conveniently broke that up into four equal parts of seven as they believed there were seven celestial bodies (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the Sun and Earth’s moon) that had influence over their lives and named the days in honour of them. It wasn’t until American industrialist, Henry Ford popularised the idea that five of those days were for work while the others should be for leisure. While the Babylonians conjured images of planetary gods when they created the week, Ford thought of his customers. In fact, his best customers were his own workers. He wanted them to have two full days to appreciate their work and enjoy their new cars.
It must be said that rest days weren’t solely the idea of Ford. The combined religious demands of Jews and Christians to have a holy day of rest on the Saturday and Sunday respectively, existed many millennia before the first Model T rolled off the line.
Thanks to the efforts of the Babylonians, Christians and Jews (and Henry Ford), you’ve got a basic structure to your week. Five days of your time were given up for your master, boss, owner or whatever title you want to give them and you’ve been given two of your own to do as you wish.
In my opinion, this preordained planning built into the very fabric of our day to day [should read: weekly] lives has left us taking what it means to truly plot our own course entirely for granted.
You must build your own ship (or borrow one) and fill your own sails.
I cannot explain how ideas pop into my head any better than I can explain how the universe materialised into existence. I would recommend you read Lawrence Krauss’ book “A Universe from Nothing” which is a testament to the work of countless scientific endeavours since the advent of the scientific revolution just a few hundred years ago. All that being said, I still have no idea what spurs me to make drastic choices in my life now, instead of making them years earlier. It’s just too complex and we have more important issues to get on with!
In December of 2018, I was sitting on our rug going through some of the magazines beneath the coffee table. I pulled out a few back issues of New Scientist and out popped my small copy of Jim Rohn’s Excerpts. It’s a little maroon booklet with quotes and words of wisdom from this acclaimed motivational speaker who addressed business people, celebrities and lay folk alike in the 1980’s. I flicked through its pages and it ignited something that must have been fermenting within my mind. I had read the little book countless times before, but for some reason, this time I’d finally taken things more seriously. Things were going to change and that night was the starting line. I was revving my engine to see what I had under the hood before I hit the gas. I had some wild ideas but I might have scared myself if I had known what was to come in just the next few months. From all the 10k runs I’ve smashed out, all the pushups I’ve pushed up, the chapters I’ve written, and of course, the production of some of my best Steemit articles you’re all privileged to be a part of, I am surprising myself almost daily.
Let’s regress for a moment; No one plans to be fat, lazy and unmotivated.
I’ve talked about this revolutionary idea that planning transforms an adult and a group of students into a focused learning hub and how a person with an idea can turn it into a thriving business. If such deliberateness can be so transformative, what’s the alternative? In an age where sloth is increasingly prevalent, parents prefer to use electronic tablets to delegate their responsibility. The child would rather stare at the tablet watching other people play games on YouTube than share ideas, stories, play games with their parents or help around the house. At best, we have a child demanding money from their parent for Fortnite skins who’s expending more effort scrolling through their Facebook feed than holding their marriage together. Is it any wonder why concentration levels of children are plummeting and people of all ages are growing more and more dissatisfied with the state of their own lives?
Some simple planning can do wonders for both your family and personal life, especially knowing that the contrary is likely to be disastrous. Nobody has ever sat down with a pen and a notepad and listed all the things they’re going to do to distance themselves from their family and friends, increase their weight to unhealthy levels, reduce the levels of exercise they engage in or how to sabotage their marriage. In fact, it may be the lack of planning that resulted in many of the unfortunate things that have come to pass. If a lack of thought and deliberate action can cause such havoc, why don’t more people plan? Either they don’t know yet, haven’t been shown how or simply because their own depressive inertia is preventing them from altering course.
How it dawned on me to spring into action could just as likely happen for you.
It was bizarrely unexplainable, as I have discussed. Maybe you stumbled across this article and realise you spend too much time in front of the television or you find your career is depriving you of joy. Maybe a little planning is in order.
In part two of this life planning micro series, I’ll be sharing how I started daily life-planning, how I’ve been using operant conditioning to keep me working hard on myself, and I will share with you seven useful tips on developing the habit of using a daily journal.
See you in Part 2!
Yours in Success,
Nick.
All content is original and belongs to @nickmorphew [13 April 2019].
Disclosure: This article was not a paid promotion and was not self-upvoted. Nor were there any affiliate links.
I’m currently working on my debut fantasy novel based on my early work, Adventures in Elowyn Glade. Please contact me if you would be interested in supporting the project to secure a high quality publication.
You didn’t think you’d leave here without me shamelessly plugging my other work, right?
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