For years I had
the behavior pattern of jumping from task to task whenever I was stressed about
how much I had to do. The behavior added
to my stress a lot (or it might’ve even been the cause of the stress). I’d start something, then remember something
else I had to do, put down the first thing and pick up the second thing, then
remember a third thing and start working on that. I could never just sit there and peacefully
focus on the task at hand until it was finished, then go on to another thing.
Now
that I plan my day, figuring out (and writing down) roughly what I’m going to
do when, I don’t keep hopping from one task to another and back again the way I
used to. I don’t even think about what
else I have to do when I’m in the midst of something, because I know that when
I’m finished or my allotted time for that a particular task is up, I’ll simply
refer to my plan and go on to the next.
For those of us
who are time-challenged, planning the day may seem like just one more thing we
don’t have time for. But taking a little
time to plan the day actually saves time in the long run. It takes time to have to keep figuring out
what you’re going to do next, and if you don’t have a plan there’s a good
chance you’ll forget something so you’ll always be playing catch-up. And dithering and worrying and feeling
anxious all take time in their own ways.
Perhaps even more importantly, they use energy.
An article in a
recent issue of the New York Times
Sunday magazine cites new research showing that every time you make a decision,
no matter how large or small, making the decision itself takes energy. It turns out that the very act of thinking, deciding, is somehow literally
tiring, and it’s cumulative, the more you’ve decided on a given day or spot in
time, the less able you are to decide again. (The researchers coined a name for
what happens when you have to make a lot of decisions: it’s decision fatigue.) It stands to reason that if your energy is
being drained by constantly making
decisions about what to do, not to mention by worrying and feeling anxious
about how productive you’re being and about what you’re not getting done,
you’ll have less energy to actually do things.
You won’t be able to make good decisions, or perhaps any decisions at
all, about anything. (In the decision fatigue study, judges were less likely to
make the difficult decision to give prisoners parole at the end of the day when
they’d already made a lot of hard decisions, than early on.) And you’ll feel stressed, exhausted, and
drained.
When I plan my day,
I make decisions once and only once – when I’m fresh -- about how to spend the
whole day. I know I can change my mind
about those decisions at any time but most of the time I don’t change my mind,
and if something comes up during the day that requires a new
when-will-I-do-this decision, I usually put that decision off until the
following day when I’m planning again. In that way I totally avoid decision
fatigue.
I often find
myself referring to my plan as the day goes along; when I’ve finished one thing
and I’m not sure what to do next I whip out my daily planner and look to see
what I’ve got written down. Then I relax
because I know I’m not forgetting anything or leaving some important thing
undone. Once again, I don’t get decision
fatigue or – to coin a similar phrase – worry fatigue. My whole day feels peaceful and productive
and at the end of it I have what the Buddha called “the bliss of innocence.”
-- Mary Allen
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