Ok, the line leader for executive functions is working memory. Remember? At the end of the line is the higher level executive function of planning. Planning is the ultimate self care because it ensures high priority tasks will get completed and gives you peace. I’m explaining how getting your working memory and prospective memory to play nice, will allow Planning to have a chance to play a role in your life and finally free up your full cognitive bandwidth!
TMP
Time management planning; plan for the day, prioritize, and set deadlines. You wrote your brian down on paper and you decided if it could wait. The items that could not wait need to be plugged into a time block in your week. This is Time management planning. The key to this is leaving a little white space for when life’s inevitable interruptions pop up.
Contingency Planning
You uplevel your planning when you have a contingent plan. Choose which items, if need be, for tomorrow’s plan can be pushed to the next day or put back in the Sunday Basket®. We all know we will be interrupted but have you made a contingency plan, a back up plan, for the day you are planning? Studies show that people who have contingency plans get more done than those who do not. Those same studies show, mind you this is in the workplace, that even with support staff and a cleaning crew, they still only complete their to-do list, 80% of the time. At least one day a week they are not completing their tasks. Now I ask you, do you think we are interrupted more at home or at work? At home we are definitely interrupted more and we are the support staff and the cleaning crew. I hope this is giving you insight as to why you are not completing your to do list. There is a lot demanding our time.
The Sunday Basket® shines at contingent planning. On Sunday when you are making the week’s plan, you can think through your meals, what if there is a snow day, what if a college doesn’t meet their deadline. But you must plan at the end. We realized, in looking over the 80 questions submitted for the Sunday Basket® webinar in late December, that most of you aren’t getting to the planning step. You should start with sorting index cards and going through slash pockets, then you do random tasks and managerial tasks, for me it’s CFO stuff.
Lastly, PLAN! I say it takes me 90 min to 3 hours because it depends on how much I do between sorting and planning. Pro tip: I plan Friday “in pencil.” I take all the tasks I need to complete and fill them into time blocks based on importance of completion. I know though, that by Friday, some tasks will have overflowed to Friday. Life happened all week. Some items will have to go back to the Sunday Basket® and some items will be pushed to Friday. There has to be white space for flexibility. That’s why we have to honestly answer, “Can it wait till Sunday?” This question may free up time that was already given to something you wanted to do not had to do. There just isn’t enough time to get it all done but there is enough time, if you plan, to get all the important stuff done through planning.
Strategic Planning
Strategic planning is the long term planning, like what we do on Planning Day, in the Productive Home Solution™. When planning, it is best to have uninterrupted time because it requires our working memory. We cannot change people so we modify the environment. We cannot eliminate distractions so we must have daily/weekly plans. Planning will never become a habit. But you can use things like the beginning of the school week to plan your weeks and the school year as a reminder to get some long term planning done. Strategic planning is how we get a grounding system in place to tackle the three types of planning; TMP, contingency, and strategic. Planning is the ultimate self care.
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