We spend a lot of time talking about planning and setting schedules. This activity is a necessary process. However, we should learn from our past and adapt our schedule when possible. There is no sense in scheduling ourselves into an unworkable schedule. Sometimes a few schedule adjustments make the difference between glorious success and burnout.
All Plans Go Out The Window In Reality
There is a quote that says plans are worthless, but planning invaluable. This simple truth is important for us to take to heart. We can plan all day long to achieve an impressive number of goals. However, planning and doing are not the same. Life happens, and that can throw off even the best plans. We also may find that tasks look better on paper than they do in reality. For example, sleeping four hours a night and completing a lot of goals looks appealing. However, we may end up utterly exhausted or find we have ignored critical things like our health or family.
Incremental Improvement Via Schedule Adjustments
Think about your weekly plans as an estimation exercise. You may find that some of the items on your list get done faster than you thought. On the other hand, some will take more time or effort than suspected. With that in mind, you should find it perfectly logical to periodically adjust your schedule and plans. You can do this weekly as you start into a new season of tasks and chores. For example, it makes sense to start your year with weekly reviews of how you did since we tend to make a lot of changes as part of the new year. These schedule adjustments will help keep you sane and might even improve the success rate you have with resolutions.
Quality over Quantity
In my experience, a common problem with goal-setting is putting too much into the pot. There are limits to the value we can give to each item and may get to a point where we are mostly just spinning our wheels on too many things. Warren Buffett has a 20-slot rule that he refers to in investing, but the concept works for goals as well. We have a limited number of goals we can effectively work on at a given time. It makes sense to reduce the number of goals and improve our quality of progress.
Warren Buffett’s “20 Slot” Rule: How to Simplify Your Life and Maximize Your Results
