The blog

For you who pre­fer lis­ten­ing to read­ing, this post is also avail­able as an episode of the ​“Done!” pod­cast:

From the worst sce­nario to the best

In a short arti­cle I found recent­ly, the entre­pre­neur Andrew Wilkin­son describes how he improved his work­days by first describ­ing how the worst work­day imag­in­able would play out and then think of some­thing con­crete for every part of that imag­ined day you can do to pre­vent it from happening.

Wilkin­son tells of how he was inspired to this clever per­spec­tive by War­ren Buffet’s wing­man Char­lie Munger, who is sup­posed to have said some­thing along the lines of ​“tell me where I’m going to die, and I’ll nev­er go there” — some­thing which must have worked quite well since Munger is 95 years old at the moment.

You and I can fol­low Wilkinson’s exam­ple as well.

Do this

Take a few moments and:

1. List what a tru­ly ter­ri­ble day at work would mean and con­tain. For me, this might, for instance, be:
   • That the day is divid­ed into sev­er­al dif­fer­ent engage­ments with only a short time between each so that I keep hav­ing to stop what I am doing to get on to the next thing.
   • That I need to car­ry heavy bags and equip­ment, which makes me warm, dirty and wrin­kles my clothes.
   • That I have meet­ings that are longer than what I find com­fort­able and what is necessary.
2. For every point you make on your list, think of a rule of some sort, a habit or an imme­di­ate action you can take that will help you avoid this par­tic­u­lar thing or event. If you can­not think of some­thing right now that will solve the poten­tial prob­lem com­plete­ly, think of some­thing that at least par­tial­ly solves it so that you improve your odds of hav­ing a good day a tad. As a vac­ci­na­tion to the poten­tial events I men­tioned in my exam­ple, I
   • only book a lim­it­ed num­ber of meet­ings per day and sched­ule them so that they fol­low one anoth­er in smooth succession,
   • send every­thing I need to bring to my lec­tures (such as books for the par­tic­i­pants) straight to the venue or the com­pa­ny I am giv­ing a lec­ture at, instead of car­ry­ing them all the way there myself, and
   • send an agen­da for the meet­ing that is as detailed as pos­si­ble to the one who I am meet­ing with at least a week in advance (which often results in them answer­ing sev­er­al of my ques­tions in their email back to me, thus mak­ing the meet­ing even shorter).
3. Do what­ev­er you can imme­di­ate­ly or cre­ate to-do-tasks for the adjust­ments you wish to make but are unable to do right away.

Add up the days and you get a whole career

If you make what you wish to avoid clear to your­self, you will have more clues as to how you can refine not just one, but all your future work­days. If you do some­thing con­crete to pre­vent what­ev­er you dread, you will be one big step clos­er to a smoother and more enjoy­able work situation.

You will end up with work­days more to your lik­ing, and the worth and val­ue of that is some­thing only you can determine.

What’s your way?

Tell me some­thing you want to avoid in your every­day life and what you have now decid­ed to do to pre­vent it from hap­pen­ing. I and oth­er read­ers are curi­ous about your tricks and solu­tions — please share in an email to me.

(Did you see above that you can also design your ide­al week?)