Yesterday, I was hit with the 'chaos factor' - otherwise known as Murphy's Law, or "whatever can go wrong will go wrong." Right in the midst of all of the holiday craziness, while working on the second draft deadline for the book on LinkedIn for Lawyers that I am co-authoring with Dennis Kennedy, trying to finish some client projects before the holidays and squeezing in articles, blog posts, etc. our Christmas tree toppled to the ground.
Water and pine needles were everywhere and Christmas ornaments were smashed to smithereens leaving tiny shards of glass all over the room. I was the only one around and I had plenty of other things to do, but I had no choice - I had to address it right then and there. It was a sudden shift in priorities that cost me a good two hours of valuable time.
It was a good reminder about effective planning: you can't possibly plan everything, but you can be prepared for the chaos factor. You never know when it's going to hit or how long you'll be sidetracked - the only thing that's a definite is that it will come, probably when you least expect it.
It's the end of the year and the time when a lot of us are planning for the future and vowing to do things better (or at least differently) next year. Sometimes our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, as my Mom used to say - we simply put too much on our plates. We want to do so much, but we are not realistic about how much we can really accomplish - and we forget that emergencies do arise and priorities get shifted.
You know it's going to happen, so you might as well plan for it. Don't schedule every minute of every day. When making a list of things to do, or goals for a particular day, estimate how much time you think it will take to accomplish each task and leave some room in between. Periodically review your list and what you actually accomplished vs. what you thought you would accomplish to see how accurate your estimates were. Then adjust accordingly for future plans.
Build a cushion into your deadlines, whether they are deadlines for clients, colleagues, family, or just deadlines for yourself. If you think you can get the document to the client within a week, give the client a date two weeks ahead. If you know the presentation is next month, put the deadline on your calendar two weeks in advance. That way, if the unexpected happens, you can still deliver on time. And if the chaos factor doesn't hit, you’ll have impressed the client with your exceptional response time - or you can actually take some time to enjoy yourself.
(I was hit by the chaos factor last month, too, when my computer crashed. Read about what I learned about planning for that unexpected and unpleasant surprise on my post "Backing Up Your Law Practice" on Lawyerist.)
(photo credit: http://flic.kr/p/5M32Sj)
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