Weathering the Storm: Practical Tips for Handling Disruptions

I and many other people in the productivity world talk a lot about planning your day. However, what happens when your plans are frequently destroyed by other people?   You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN   Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The CP Learning Centre Membership Programme The Working With… Weekly Newsletter The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page   Episode 303 \ Script Hello, and welcome to episode 303 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show. As the Scottish poet Robert Burns once wrote “The best-laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley”. “Gang aft agley” can be translated as go awry. This means that no matter how well you plan your day or week, things are not going to go according to plan. Similarly, one of my favourite quotes that is often attributed to Mike Tyson is, “Everyone has a plan until they are punched in the face.” And it’s so true.  One of the reasons so few people actually do a daily or weekly plan is because they believe that no matter what they plan, it is going to be torpedoed once they begin the day. A simple text message or email can derail the whole day. Yet, I still believe it is important to have a plan. Without a plan, you will be waiting for others to give you something to do. You will feel lost and never get anything important to you done, and you are guaranteed to build horrendous backlogs. This leads me to this week’s question, and for that, it means it’s time to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice. This week’s question comes from Sasha. Sasha asks, Hi Carl, what tips do you have for me to harden my system so that it doesn't constantly wobble when life experiences significant deviations outside of the planned week?  Hi Sasha, thank you for your question.  Now, I know there is a little more background to your question. Specifically, managing two young children and both yourself and your wife working full time.  So with that in mind the first problem people face is with being too structured. What I mean by this is being too specific about what you want to get done each day. Most of the things we want to get done around the house do not really need to be done on a specific day. For instance, I like to give my home office a really good clean on a Saturday morning, but more often than not something will come up that prevents me from being able to do that.  Now if I want to follow my calendar religiously, it would annoy me if I was prevented from doing what I had planned, but really, does my office need a good clean specifically on a Saturday morning? No of course not. It would be nice, but it really doesn’t matter if I do it on Saturday morning or Sunday afternoon. The only thing that really matters is at some point in the week I do it. (But even then that is debatable).  This problem can be exacerbated if you have young kids. With kids under the age of 13, there’s no way you will be able to maintain a well structured home. Kids were born with the natural ability to destroy all well intentioned plans. And that’s fantastic. It’s all part of the experience of raising children. If it didn’t happen, you’d miss out on one of life’s joys.  I can promise you on the day your kids turn 13 you will miss all that disruption. Your kids are going to go from being entirely dependent on you to wanting to have nothing to do with you as they go through adolescence.  For most of you, I hope, your family comes first. This means if you get irritated because a family member ungently, and unexpectedly, needs you you should be happy. It might be inconvenient, but family comes first. There’s no debate. If there is