How I Set Myself Up for Success: Expectations & Routines
My Preschool Plan
I talked last week about simplicity and peacefulness going into an activity. Now I want to talk structure. Is there simplicity and peacefulness in the structuring of your activities? How can you make your tasks more stress-free from a planning point of view?
There was a book that came out when I was a child called All I Really Needed to Know I learned in Kindergarten. I remember the title, because there was a buzz about it with my teachers and with a lot of the parents in my community. Now that my kids are entering school themselves, I’m seeing a lot of truth to this idea (probably even more so in terms of early childhood education and preschool). Beyond playing nice and fair, cleaning up after yourself, and sharing and the like, we can learn from the strategies we use for our littlest kin. Things like setting up manageable and feasible expectations, scaffolding objectives, breaking things down into bite-sized tasks, and the most important one of all: making as much as possible into a routine. All of these work well to simplify while de-stressing and flowing bliss into the day.
Baby Steps
With my work, I have a lot of projects spinning at the same time. As soon as I learn of a project, I take a look at the deadline (or make a deadline if there isn’t one assigned) and then work backward from there to break the job down into smaller pieces. I make even the most herculean tasks seem manageable and feasible. Launching a new study, writing a new book, giving a new speech, whatever it is I break it down into baby steps. I simplify the job into doable bite-sized tasks—things that don’t scare me or stress me out. Here’s what I mean:
Completing a multi-year study? Scary!
Making a contact list of whom to reach out to first? Easy.
Releasing my next book? Yipes!
Writing a couple paragraphs on what led me to write this book? Sure thing.
Lecturing on a new topic in front of a new audience? Please no!
Making a list of takeaways I would want my new people to get? No problem.
I then plug these baby steps into my calendar. Doing that scaffolds the objectives and sets manageable and feasible expectations for myself. It also lets me only focus on the tiny task at hand each day—that stress-free bite-sized piece that I am responsible for, and not the intimidating endpoint. Importantly, I stay in the present and not out there worrying about what things are going to turn out like way out in the future.
The Little Things That Count
The other part of structuring my activities that creates simplicity and peacefulness is partitioning the pieces of the different jobs I have to do into routine parts of my day. So, for me, if I know that I have several jobs on my agenda, then I need to slot a time for each. I try to set my bite-sized pieces as activities that I can do in an hour or less. That way, if something comes up at home, at school, or at the office, I know that I’ve built in enough wiggle room to deal with the unforeseen.
I stack these slots into a daily routine. In other words, I work on the same job at the same time each day. This takes the planning out of the planning—I plan once and then I don’t have to do it again for months. I know what to expect each day and I waste no time worrying about what I should be doing or when I should be doing it.
The best part of it is that I feel good about myself when I’ve completed my day, because I know that I’ve accomplished my to-dos. I get satisfaction and pride in the little milestones. And, though I’m not focused on it, I know deep inside that I’m marching toward my bigger goal. I can end the day feeling deserving of R&R (or, in my case, caregiving with my full heart).
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