What to do when you get punched in the face

The infamous boxer Mike Tyson once said: "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face."

His statement accurately captures what most of us experience when our plan for the workday meets reality.

When that happens, remaining deliberate about how we go about our day is key. Depending on the nature of the "punch", we can choose one of three specific tactics that let us pull that off: Sticking to our plan, adapting our plan, or capturing things to include in our plan later.

A brief recap: While a weekly 10-minute planning ritual gives us a bird's eye view of the days ahead, a 3-minute planning ritual each morning helps us avoid spending the day on autopilot.

Now, the three specific tactics are all about hourly adaptation, which allows us to deliberately check in with – and possibly course-correct – our schedule as the day unfolds. So next, let's take a closer look at each of the three.

First, whenever reasonably possible, stick to the implementation intentions you set in your plan. During your collaborative work bouts, exclusively use your energy and attention for the specific type of collaborative work (e.g. answering email) you had scheduled for that time. During your focus bouts, refrain from email and other collaborative work altogether. And during defocus bouts (e.g. a mingle or movement break), let your mind recover by staying away from work – and ideally, your smartphone – entirely. 

Second, whenever it isn't reasonably possible to stick with the implementation intentions you put into your plan, adapt them. If, for example, there is an urgent meeting or call that requires your energy and attention at a point when you had planned to focus on a "deep work" task, briefly go through the three steps of your daily planning ritual again to change your schedule for the rest of the day accordingly. While doing that, keep in mind your three goals for the week.

Third, have a systematic way of capturing things to include in your plan later. As David Allen described in his productivity classic “Getting Things Done”, your mind is for having ideas, not holding them. The less cluttered your mind, the more productive you get. That's why capturing thoughts and ideas at the moment is crucial for your ability to accomplish what matters at work. I'll provide a deep dive into how to do just that next week.

Pro tip: Using a physical planner (e.g. the Time-Block Planner) to go about your day has several advantages. It allows you to review your plan and capture things with a much lower risk of getting distracted. Also, it adds some friction to adapting your plan – which motivates you to limit changes to instances when doing so is really necessary rather than merely convenient.

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Until next week,
Christian