IF YOU CAN’T WORK, PLAN

BY LAURA VANDERKAM

Maybe it’s the mid-afternoon slump. Maybe it’s a few days of feeling blah after an intense time at work or home. If you can just take the time off and be gentle to yourself, great. But if that’s not going to happen, here’s another idea. If you can’t work, plan. Using low-energy time to think about what Future You could do can turn what might feel like wasted time into something more fruitful. This realization is how Friday became my weekly planning day (see Tranquility by Tuesday Rule #2: Plan on Fridays). Many of us who work a Monday to Friday week are pretty much sliding into the weekend by Friday. It can be hard to start anything new, particularly after lunch. But I realized that I might be willing to think about what Future Me should be doing. It takes less effort to write “revise book proposal” on a planner page than it does to actually, you know, revise that book proposal. So I began creating the next week’s plans on Friday, trusting that Monday Morning Me would have more vim and vigor for these things than whatever I’d morphed into by Friday afternoon.

This insight can work for all kinds of planning. If you’re spinning your wheels on Thursday afternoon you could take a stab at a weekend plan. If you’re feeling like you’re banging your head against the wall you could regroup and write a Summer Fun List, or a List of 100 Dreams, or do something random like plan next year’s holiday vacation. Or plan something completely unrelated to your current slump… like next November’s podcast episode topics?

Perhaps the sense of devising a plan will feel energizing. That energy might help you get going on something else. But even if not, now you’ve got a plan for next weekend. Or a Summer Fun List. Or next November’s podcast lineup. Those are things that didn’t exist before, and probably should happen at some point. Productivity is all mental anyway. If you feel like you should be getting something done, and then you do get something done, whatever that something happens to be, that tends to register as a win.

Reprinted with permission. Laura is the author of several time management and productivity books. Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters, which was published on October 11, 2022, shares strategies that have been proven to help busy people feel like life is more sustainable and joyful on normal days. Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done (Portfolio, May 29, 2018) explores, through more than 900 time diaries collected on a single March day, why some busy people feel relaxed about time, while others do not. I Know How She Does It: How Successful Women Make the Most of Their Time (Portfolio, 2015) tackles the question of how women combine work and life through an analysis of 1001 days in the lives of women with demanding careers and children at home. What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast (Portfolio, 2013) profiles prominent people who use time creatively to achieve their goals. 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think (Portfolio, 2010) argues that time is best approached from the holistic perspective of a week (168 hours) rather than any single day.

Ms. Vanderkam will be speaking at the USSSA National Conference in this October in Orlando, FL! Don’t miss her session, “168 Hours: Succeeding at Work and Life 24-7” on Tuesday, October 3 at 9 am.

Check out the USSSA website for further details, registration, and hotel details to set up your reservation!

Laura’s work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, City Journal, Fortune, and Fast Company. She has appeared on numerous television programs, including The Today Show and CBS This Morning, hundreds of radio segments, and has spoken about time and productivity to audiences of all sizes. Her TED talk, “How to gain control of your free time,” has been viewed more than 12 million times. She is the co-host, with Sarah Hart-Unger, of the podcast Best of Both Worlds. She hosts the every-weekday-morning podcast Before Breakfast, featuring productivity tips designed to take listeners’ days from great to awesome.

She lives outside Philadelphia with her husband and five children. She blogs most days at LauraVanderkam.com.