Planning: An Overachiever’s Guide
It’s my wedding anniversary today. Six years I’ve been married to this rather lovely human being. Lucky me, eh? We bought our first house that same year and got the keys less than a month before the wedding. And I started college - my first venture into formal education since I’d left high school - a couple of months before that. If you do the maths, you’ll realise that was all in 2014. The same year as the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Suffice it to say, it was a hectic year. Fortunately, some of those transferable skills I was talking about last week, developed during my time in sport, are good time management, planning and organisation.
I bet my parents are reading this right now and howling at that statement.
Because I am not a naturally organised individual. My time-keeping is questionable, to put it politely, and I have a brain like a sieve. Actually, that’s not true - I have an excellent memory, but only for certain things. Film quotes. Book plots. Historical facts. Ancient mythology. Things my husband said he would do but didn’t…
But I find it difficult to juggle multiple things at once. Organise a seating plan for the wedding? Fine. Write a report for college at the same time? Just about manageable. Do both on top of house hunting and training? It feels like my mind is melting inside my skull.
And that makes sense. The human brain can focus on one thing very well and two things to some extent, but introduce a third and the whole thing unravels. It’s the main challenge of rifle shooting. For those who have never done it, the basic premise is stand still, point it in the middle, and pull the trigger without screwing up the first two. The standing still bit is hard and pointing in the middle is more complex than you’d think, but that last one… there were days when it felt damn near impossible.
So it’s not really surprising that I struggle to juggle (sorry, couldn’t resist). Unfortunately, it’s a necessary part of life and something I’ve had to work hard on. It still doesn’t come naturally, and I’m still easily overwhelmed if the plate gets piled too high, but I’ve developed a couple of useful strategies for managing the balancing act.
The first seems obvious, but for me it was groundbreaking. I’ve never thought of myself as a visual learner, but the minute I started blocking out my time with a daily planner, it all made sense. I just use the calendar app on my phone and computer, but everything I do goes in there. Work. Meetings. Appointments. Writing time. Dog walks. Dinner with Grandma. Even self-care time! It all gets scheduled.
Part of that is just needing to get it out of my head. Because I can be forgetful, I often stress that I will forget about meetings or appointments - to the point that it would be pretty much impossible to forget since I’m thinking of nothing else. By putting them in the calendar, I get them out of my head and free up brain power for other things, and having that visual aid helps me to keep track of myself through the day.
I am often guilty of scheduling so much in my days that just looking at the calendar fills me with dread, but by setting myself clear times for different tasks, it helps me switch my attention from one to the next.
And yes, it is colour coded.
The other important bit in that are my to-do lists. Again, nothing groundbreaking here, but I would be lost without them. Pretty much every aspect of my life has its own to-do list. Work, meetings, writing, blogging, housework all seem obvious, but I’ve also been guilty of producing to-do lists and schedules for my hobbies. It helps me manage my workload. Like every overachiever since the dawn of time, I’m terrible for giving myself too much to do - and then subsequently beating myself up for having not got through it all. By limiting the time and the number of tasks needing achieved, I’m able to better manage myself and keep my stress levels under control.
Like with the planner, it also just helps me get everything out of my head. When I have a list of things to do, I find it nearly impossible to relax. Writing it down means that I can’t forget it, and that lets my brain switch off and move on to the next thing. And, because my brain likes to make me suffer, its favourite time to remind me of things I need to do is just as I’m falling asleep. Which is why I now sleep with a notepad and pen next to my bed. So rather than my to-do list going round and round in my head for hours at night, I just write it down and deal with it in the morning.
But it’s not always just a random list of tasks to be accomplished. Particularly with regards to my writing, there is a whole process of analysis and goal-setting that goes into generating the to-do list - but that’s a whole other blog post. Suffice it to say, for some things, I need to know what I’m trying to achieve before I can start breaking tasks down into manageable workloads.
When I was organising the wedding (and preparing for the Commonwealth Games, juggling college and house hunting) I used both of the above to keep track of myself, but the wider operation was almost an exercise in project planning. It wasn’t too dissimilar from my annual season planning, in that you start with the end point and work back, so it wasn’t totally overwhelming. It’s a bit like a jigsaw puzzle - you need enough of the picture built up to start filling in the blanks. In season planning, you would have your priority match for the year - Olympics or Commonwealth Games, World or European Champs etc - and then you would pick some key competitions prior to that as preparation. Goal-setting and performance profiling would come in here too, but not really relevant for planning a wedding (although I did do the stereotypical bride-trying-to-lose-weight thing). The trouble I had in 2014 was that I was trying to season plan and wedding plan at the same time.
Fortunately, I had a lot of advice from a friend who’d been through the same thing. British swimmers, Keri-anne Payne and David Carry, got married two months after the London 2012 Olympic Games, and Keri-anne’s advice on planning a wedding while preparing for a major sporting event was invaluable. Namely - do as much as you can as early as you can! Again, it’s a bit of a jigsaw puzzle trying to piece together the various tasks. Things need done in a certain order. You can’t confirm one aspect until you’ve finalised three others. But you can’t finalise one of those until the first thing is confirmed. It’s not been too dissimilar to planning a book launch, to be honest.
Looking back on it, I wish I’d discovered what I now use for project planning.
Gantt charts.
Credit where credit is due - it was David who introduced me to these. Or at least, explained and advocated for them. I just wish we’d had that conversation a year earlier! College had asked me to prepare one for a project, and I couldn’t get my head around it. Nor could I see the point of it, to be quite honest. I relayed this when Andrew and I were round for dinner one evening. David leapt to his feet and began a 20min presentation on the workings and benefits of Gantt charts. I laughed it off at the time, but they were useful for the various projects I had going on at college, and I could see how useful it would have been for planning the wedding.
Then six months ago, when I was struggling to keep track of all the various tasks and timelines involved in self-publishing, I revisited David’s advice once more. And, dear Lord, am I glad I did. Gantt charts now form a core part of my writing process and are vital to keeping me on track.
Here’s a thought… maybe I should make one for Andrew as an anniversary gift. Help him keep track of all his house jobs…
