Salvaging the day for your plans

Why is it so easy for an entire day to spiral out of control when one thing goes wrong?

It feels like, although you have a plan for the day, you have wrong footed and the events of the day are suddenly working against you instead of to plan. We have all been there, a coffee spill in the morning, a meeting missed, a [insert most recent crisis], or any number of unexpected disruptions. Suddenly, the rest of the day feels out of control, it has careened off track, and our planned events start toppling one after the other like a series of small dominoes.

A useful mitigation to this kind of sequential derailment is to break your day into identifiable chunks such as morning, afternoon, and evening. This will allow you to schedule specific activities for each part of the day rather than perceiving the day as one long, unbroken, list of tasks. The benefit of this approach is that if something unexpected happens in the morning, for example, you could restart your day at the next part and can focus on the afternoon or evening tasks and move forward as planned.

The value of this strategy is that it helps to provide structure without overwhelm. The better you get at estimating effort the more confident you will become. It also allows for flexibility, it is no longer an “all or nothing”/ “success or failure” dichotomy.  If one section of the day is lost, you can reschedule those tasks to another time—whether the next day or later in the week. This way, you’re not carrying the risk or weight of the consequences of failing to achieve the planned tasks of the whole day. For someone in need of Executive Function support (including ADHD), breaking the day into smaller chunks makes life plans feel more manageable, reducing the anxiety that can come with trying to "fix" everything at once.

The benefits of this approach can be summarised as giving you back your control, the ability to schedule and reschedule some of your tasks, an ability to focus on planned tasks at the appropriate time of the day plan and to create more manageable expectations for yourself.

By chunking you plans and success criteria you will be empowered to deal with setbacks by containing them to a part of the day and a part of the plan rather than feeling the whole day is ruined. This will enable you to keep moving forward, one part of the day at a time, boosting both your productivity and your confidence.

Coaching can be a valuable support in building time-blocking habits that are designed for your life, because having them work for you is the key to having an approach that will stick. A Coach, without judgement, can help you with managing and estimating how long tasks take, find an approach that works, assist you to adjust plans and manage time, provide you with support and a check in to keep you accountable.

For those with requiring Executive Function support (including ADHD), coaching offers tools to manage disruptions, build confidence, and stay flexible—turning time management into a more personalised, sustainable system.