Plan and reflect together

Taking a moment to look back can make planning more effective

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
tip is to plan and reflect at about the same time.
Just as it's important to figure out how you'd like

(00:24):
to spend your time, reflecting on where the time really
went can make better planning choices possible in the future.
Longtime listeners know that I think everyone should have a
designated weekly planning time. I like the idea of planning
on Fridays for the upcoming week, but the key is

(00:47):
that you have some regular time where you'd look forward,
figure out your priorities, figure out the logistics, and get
clear on what you need and want to do. It
is fine to just do this looking forward, but if
you want to get the most out of your planning sessions,
it might help to take just two minutes or so

(01:09):
to look back on the previous week. Look at your
priority list. Did everything happen if so, awesome? If not?
Why not? Was the list too ambitious? Was life too unpredictable?
Did you decide you didn't want to do something or
it wasn't the best use of your time. Did something

(01:31):
take a lot longer than you expected? Or perhaps less
time than you expected. There are a few upsides to
looking back. One is that if something didn't happen, you
can make a choice about whether to assign it to
the next week, or maybe you can make it happen,

(01:51):
or maybe you can make it happen in the next
thirty minutes or so if you like. It's a reminder
of what you thought was important and becomes a moment
to choose whether to continue with that thought or change it.
The second upside, though, is just more practice at figuring
out how long things take. Time. Estimation is hard. It

(02:16):
is hard to know exactly what will fit in a week.
But if you look back and see what did fit
in a week, and you do this again and again,
you will get a better sense of what can fit
in a week in the future. I know that for
me this has been a real upside of a dedicated
weekly planning practice for many decades. Now I look back

(02:38):
on what I did, and that lets me know what
I can do. I tend to make more restrained choices
for the upcoming week than I might have because I
know that stuff can come up. Stuff always comes up.
When I'm more careful about assigning myself work for the week.
That means I probably will get everything crossed off by
the end of the week. I have a long working

(03:01):
list of other priorities, so I can always go pull
something from that if I have extra time. But long
term reflecting and planning means that the amount of stuff
I plan to do tends to match the amount of
time I have. But long term reflecting and planning means
that the amount of stuff I plan to do tends
to match the amount of time I have. Not always,

(03:24):
but mostly you can do this for shorter planning periods too.
I tend to create my to do list for the
next day at the end of each work day. This
also gives me a chance to look over the list
for the day that just ended. Did I get through everything,
did I have a lot of extra time, or was
I perhaps racing to get through things. This helps me

(03:47):
make rational choices for the next day, and I think
it can help you make good choices for your to
do list too. Sometimes people find planning and creating priority
lists to be a source of strung because they don't
get through everything and that makes them feel behind. Reflection
helps build in a check on this. You know that

(04:10):
last week and the week before, and the week before
there was a certain amount of space. Most likely that
will be the case for the next week too. Planning
and reflection go hand in hand, so take just a
moment to reflect and your planning will be a lot

(04:30):
more effective. In the meantime, This is Laura, Thanks for listening,
and here's to making the most of our time. Thanks
for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,

(04:52):
or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
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