You can’t reach SUCCESS unless you have a plan, otherwise how will you know that you have finished? – Steve Stewart

Schedule got changed?  Something “come up”?  Did a phone call keep your dominos from falling in line the way you had set it up in your “to-do” list?  What did you do?

Fill the new hole?

I always felt like I had to move everything up the list to fill the new hole that was just created by the “bad news” or unexpected event.  Sounds like a good idea, doesn’t it?  I am discovering that this is not always the best solution.

Example: I plan out my week on Monday: get my resources together, confirm meetings, the normal Monday grind.  Then I find out Tuesday afternoon that my Wednesday schedule will have to be cancelled.  No problem, I can move everything up a day and do some unscheduled work on Friday.  Sounds like an excellent idea!  So I re-schedule travel plans, reports, etc.  I spend about 90 minutes to do this, and it doesn’t always work out (the schedules of others can’t be changed as easily as mine).

Or keep with the plan?

Or I can KEEP WITH THE PLAN.  I keep Thursday and Friday the way I planned, and throw some unscheduled work into Wednesday’s 9-5.  I saved myself 90 minutes of phone calls, hotel cancellations, and my brain cells are used to create new thoughts instead of re-working the old stuff.

Remain productive

This experience is working it’s way into my personal life.  The car battery dies so I have to go to AutoZone first thing the next day.  Or it rains and I can’t mow the lawn when planned.  I can’t slide the family lunch date up in the schedule to fill the newly-opened hole on my list.  So I KEEP WITH THE PLAN and think of something else productive to do.  Idle hands do the devil’s work, and I hate to waste precious time.  There is always some sticky door handle to fix that would make the wife happy, or spending a little extra time with the daughter will go a long way in our relationship.  If they are busy then there is always that book that “I’ll get to someday”.  No cartoons, no Twitter, maybe some music.  More productivity without sacrificing the rest of the day’s activities.

The bottom line

And what about (yes, wait for it….) your money?  Do you have a PLAN for your money?  Yeah, I know that unexpected things come up that cause us to spend money we weren’t expecting to spend.  The car battery wasn’t a planned purchase, but the EMERGENCY FUND was there to catch our slack.  And what a sense of relief to know the money is there.  It’s not a “car repair emergency” AND a “money emergency”, just  a “jump-start the thing and pay for the new battery” thing.  Check!

KEEP WITH A PLAN!  Now go and do the rest of your list.