My week was all planned out. I knew what my priorities were, I had blocked off time for a project that needed sustained attention, and I was feeling pretty good about how mapped out my week was. Then it all went south.
An agent offered a phone call with an author, which I accepted. I was blown away by the author. This agent was on a short timeline, so I scheduled a crash session of pub board (our group that makes publishing decisions). I made an offer, we Skyped with the author, and long story short: we got the deal. It was both exhilarating and exhausting.
Meanwhile, everything I had planned for the week vaporized. Well, I wish it vaporized. What actually happened is it piled up. My email inbox bulged. The project that needed sustained attention still needed it, but now it was on an even tighter schedule. I had to do the Heisman to three different colleagues who wanted short meetings with me.
A week or so later I took a few steps back to think this through, and I’ve come up with three questions to ask when it all goes south:
- Did it all go south because of a lack of discipline, or because of a great opportunity? If it all went south because of a great opportunity, you should congratulate yourself for your adaptive prowess, your lightning quick reflexes, your ability to drop everything for something more important. If it went south because you lacked discipline, be gentle with yourself, but consider how you can interrupt the downward spiral sooner so you can get back on track that much faster. Peter Bregman, in 18 Minutes, recommends using technology to prompt yourself every hour to ask two questions: “Am I doing what I want to do? Am I being who I want to be?“
- How can you tweak your calendar and the expectations of those around you to get caught up? Take the time now to be proactive about what it’s going to take to catch up. Maybe you need a special dispensation from family or colleagues to get some extra time. Don’t do this often! But every now and again I’ve found the people around me are very willing to cut me a break if I need to recuse myself of a meeting or work through an evening to get caught up.
- What apologies do you need to say? If you had to Heisman anybody like I did, be sure to go back to them, explain what happened, and say you’re sorry. Again, most people are very forgiving. The more I receive such forgiveness, the more willing I am to forgive when things are reversed. My favorite line these days: “I’d be harder on you if I was perfect.”
Sometimes our best-laid plans are thrown up in the air, and we are forced to focus on the urgent. That’s just life. In fact, sometimes the best of life comes from these urgencies. But we can also be intentional in the aftermath to smooth things out and move on with confidence.
What do you do when it all goes south?
I whine. I weep and wail. I beg God to fix it one more time.
And then I roll up my sleeves and work. Fortunately, my schedule is so wide open that things rarely go south. I have so much time built-in for emergencies that I never really run out of time. Though I did stay up until six in the morning a couple of month ago to get a writing assignment done on time when the nasty thing refused to be written in a timely manner.