On a busy week, or month, or year, it’s natural to crave some quiet, uninterrupted time to get things done. I always tell myself “if only I had a week alone to work on this, I’d make so much more progress”, as if an opportunity like that could only exist in a fantasy.
Yet I’m often handed exactly that, especially around the holidays with a lot of teams out on vacation, and the otherwise frenetic pace of the office at a standstill. It’s certainly a treat to get things done during these times, but I’m often disappointed by myself when I don’t make better use of the time. For a long time, I convinced myself that this was some failing of myself, or an ability to focus.
But more likely, it’s a symptom of an overly ambitious to-do list. I love a good list – it’s how I run much of my life. But I can always sense when I’ve gone a bit overboard with them. The threshold typically happens when I start trying to measure the amount of time I spend in each hour of the day. It helps to look at past to-do lists, and see how often my eyes were bigger than my stomach. It’s plain as day in hindsight, yet when planning the coming day or coming week, it’s quite hard to estimate. There’s no clean solution to this, other than continuing to give your best laid plans a haircut before proceeding. If you have three big tasks and two small ones to tackle today, give them an honest look. Which of those tasks is truly essential today? Can you get away with one big task, and those two small ones instead?
If you can negotiate with yourself to accept this deal, and underestimate your productivity, then you’re much less likely to be disappointed with your progress.