How Does The Day Pan Out?

We all have our own schedules and things to be done each day, and we have our own style of doing it. There are the early risers versus the late-nighters. Champions and go-getters can come from both. I know friends and family who love rising early and are doing really well in life, and at the same time, I know friends who love to stay up late in the night and get things done. I can only conclude that our style isn’t something that decides how far we go in life; rather, it's our pace.

Now, obviously, we all would have heard of staying positive, doing the right things, and doing it well, and those continue to be so. But the question is, how positive can we stay positive if we have to manage creeping thoughts that keep coming in between our work. Has that happened to you? I am sure it has. And I am not talking about distractions and other work. I am talking about things that happen that put us off the pace.

Now, distractions at work usually come in the form of other work that needs to be done. If that is so, then it is a case of prioritizing with the knowledge that both are important work to be completed. However, I am referring to things, work, or thoughts that come in between and delay us without having any importance to our day. These delays keep us away from finishing our work and not achieving what we set out for.

Let’s look at them closely.

Why Do We Get Delayed?

We all would have had the experience of wanting to finish few things in the day, which does appear doable at the beginning of the day. But somehow, as we coast through the day, we get into things and end up not finishing what we wanted to do. It happens all the time, but the question is – is it avoidable?

The answer is yes, only if we keep a certain pace to what we want to do. Let’s understand this with an example:

Case 1: You have a relatively free day in comparison to the mad rush you normally have. You intend to take time to focus and do the things you couldn’t do in the last few days. You plan the day to complete those things.

Case 2: You are rushing through the day as deadlines for multiple things are fast approaching. You finish each task (or job), jump to the next task, and work at breakneck speed. You don’t have many options but to finish the tasks at hand.

Now, tell me, in which case do we end up doing more? The answer is easy – it would be case 2. And in which case do we end up doing a quality job? Crazy as it may sound, in most cases, it will also be case 2. Now, you would argue, hold on if we have more time to do something in case 1, wouldn't the outcome be of higher quality? It will be if we are focused on getting the job done earlier than the deadline and taking time to improve our work. But that seldom happens. You see, as we give more time to do something, the work expands to fill the time. If that is the case, we will keep doing parts of the work until our deadline instead of finishing the work early and improving our work. So, what can we do?

The answer is in our observation itself. Don’t let work expand to fill the time. We should try to finish the work in a set time way before the deadline. How do we do it? By doing things at a good pace.

Why Do We Need to Have Pace In Our Work?

Because we end up doing more and end up doing it well.

Consider case 2 in the previous section. Though the person doing the work is doing it fast, it is being done against a deadline. That means there would be pressure, stress, anxiety, and other similar feelings. The idea is to do things without the need for these external stimuli (deadline).

If we keep doing our work at a good pace instead of waiting for the deadline, we will do more and a better job. The best part is that we would do all that with a better frame of mind and a happy feeling. Most importantly, we will do the work way before the deadline.

There is one other reason why we need to have pace in our work. We touched upon the aspect of work expanding to fill the time. Do we know why that happens? Because we tend to allow distractions (not real work) to fill in the time allotted for work. If we have more time to do something, we may ease up to the extent of not starting the work, and even if we start, we may keep waddling in our thoughts or get lost in some mundane work. As such, our work automatically expands. Understand this – the work does not expand because we do more, but we are doing less and filling the time with unnecessary or unrelated things.

So, how do we bring pace to our work?

Bringing Pace to Work!

One of the issues with lack of pace is the distractions. If we know what we have to do and how much to achieve in a day, we will be focused enough to get it done. It is as good as case 2 in the previous sections that we saw. So, how do we do it?

Let’s get back to some of the basics:

Plan What We Have To Do In A Day

Here we are talking about the laundry list of all the things that have to be done. Don’t try to prioritize at this point. Just write down anything and everything that needs to be done.

Prioritize the List

Now that the list is ready, we get on with the prioritization. We work out what can be done today and what can be done later in the week. That way, we can arrive at the most things that can be done today. It is recommended to have a marginally higher target for the day. That makes us push ourselves to get the work done as against slacking a bit through the day.

Remember to get all the thinking completed at this point. What I mean is, once we start working on the list, we should not have to stop to prioritize unless critical work comes by. In the absence of any interruptions, we know what you have to do and in what order.

Give A Final Glance

Here is where we go through the list once again and do some tinkering if required. This will also allow us to add a few more items to the list if we feel we might have unnecessary slack time. Remember, food and other things are important. Don’t compromise on them. 😊

Get On With It

Now that we are done with the optimization and finalization, we just go for it. Give it our all and get things done.

Review At The End of The Day

There are no prizes for guessing that there will be only two outcomes at the end of the day. We would have achieved all that we wanted to achieve, OR we would have failed.

Either one of the outcomes is fine as we will learn from them. If we fail, then it means we took up too many things to do. So, reduce the work and try the next day again. On the other hand, if we achieve what we set out to achieve - kudos!! The only thing that would be recommended then is checking if our planning is free of slack time. If, however, we had stretched our target and achieved it, then well done! Keep going! 😊

That’s It | That’s the Mantra!

I hope we understand that keeping a certain pace allows us to achieve more and invariably with good quality. As we do more every day, we will start finding more time to do more things. We would be an unstoppable machine achieving everything that is out there to achieve.

Avoid the slack time and unnecessary thinking, and distractions once we get on with the work. That way, we will train our minds to remain focused on the job and get the job done. Become a finisher, and we will be happy with who we become! 😊

Image Courtesy: Alan9187 at Pixabay | List at Pixabay