How To Stay Focused On The Plan At Hand

Kristyn Meyer is on a journey to make herself the best human that she can be. These posts are a reflection of that. She welcomes your support via reading and through commissioned affiliate links within her posts! To stay up to date on all of her shenanigans, please subscribe to her email list! (psst…there’s a free gift involved)

I pride myself on being an organized person.

List making and I go hand in hand.

I have labels throughout my kitchen as to where things are to go.

My children’s toys all have a designated spot, and it makes me quite heated when my spousal unit just throws them willy nilly anywhere of his choosing.

So with all of that, can you tell me why I have horrible follow through when it comes to my work organization?

Anyone, anyone?

Seriously. I have a great planner that is super helpful, which I love. A dry-erase board is at my disposal. Within the resources that I have at my fingertips are plenty of options for calendaring, reminding, and task structuring.

But yet, every attempt I make to get on a consistent routine with it all only works for about a week or two. And then it just stops.

Halts.

Crashes and burns.

The work still goes on, but it’s kind of just me doing what pops into my head during whatever time is afforded to me.

But even with the work still getting accomplished, it annoys me. I can’t help it. I love organization and predictability. The only kind of spontaneity that I like is the planned kind, which isn’t even a thing. What I want more than anything is to have routine expectations for the day, have them written out in a dedicated and devoted space, and have it be the same every day.

Honestly, the fact that I haven’t been able to master this causes me to feel bad about myself. Like I am lacking in some area. Which just makes it all even worse.

When I sit and try to figure out exactly where this emotion is coming from and why it comes up as a result of my not following a scheduled routine, it takes me back to a period in time where I had to be that way to be successful.

During that time in my life, I literally scheduled every moment of my day to be on top of my workload. If I didn’t, the possibility of everything crumbling was very high and the rest of my colleague’s work would suffer as well.

Stressful much? Yeah, definitely.

But now I am not in that position, regardless of whether my brain still wants to feel like it from time to time. I need to remember that my world now is much different from my world then.

I don’t need that to be successful now.

AND my self-worth is not dictated from the execution of my calendar routine.

That sounds so simple, right? How often in our lives do we truly need to stress over a calendar routine? But it is real, and it’s something that was part of my life for many years. So just jumping away from it is very hard to do mentally, when previously it all but determined my worth as an employee.

What I am learning now is that a slower pace doesn’t necessarily require a strict routine. When I sit and reflect on the past few months I realize that even without having that component that I thought to be so vital, I have had my best months yet. The traffic to my blog is higher, my freelance opportunities are growing, my ranking is growing. All of that has happened without being crazy disciplined!

I have taken the time to enjoy life with my kids and family, accomplish my dreams simultaneously, and do it with much less stress.

How To Stay Focused On The Plan At Hand?

Therefore, I think what it boils down to is that I have stayed focused on the plan at hand. The plan was always to be with my kids more and to grow my blog. What it was not to be was to overschedule my day to fit work into every open crevice that I could find in my schedule.

I would say that I was pretty successful at that then, right? Therefore, that should be enough to boost my self-esteem and help me to see the true value of my self-worth. I am accomplishing what I set out to do, and I am doing it well. And new jobs and careers require different things. This one does not require intricate and structured scheduling.

And for that I am truly grateful.

In the end, a detailed plan or not, my business is growing and thriving as is my family. It’s possible that I need to make a drastic change in the way that my mind works as it pertains to accomplishing tasks. Whereas before my focus was on intricate details and time blocks, now it’s on a bigger picture. And surrounding that is life, which I have the privilege of enjoying more of now. So sometimes the answer to “How To Stay Focused On The Plan At Hand” is to be flexible to your surroundings and work towards things being done when they can, even if they aren’t perfect. Because someday I will have all the time in the world to focus on every tiny detail. Right now that’s not the priority, and I need to remember that.

Enjoy your life and the moments it affords you!