The blog

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

If we instead have more fore­sight, and a long-term plan and per­spec­tive, we will see things com­ing a mile away. It might be a dead­line, an impor­tant meet­ing, a trip or some­thing else that needs to occur on a cer­tain day. We will then have plen­ty of time to get ready and do what we need to in order to face the oncom­ing calm­ly and comfortably.

Clear view ahead

It is like hav­ing both the high beam and those extra strong head­lights on when dri­ving in the dark (mak­ing you see far ahead on the road), instead of only hav­ing the day­time run­ning lights on (and not see­ing some­thing until it steps out right in front of you). With more fore­sight, we will not have to fin­ish tasks in a pan­ic but will have time to make the final touch­es to what we have done so that we can leave it feel­ing real­ly pleased with what we have accomplished.

Now, when the fall is here and we are get­ting into the swing of things again, it is an excel­lent time to spend fif­teen min­utes or so on things that give us bet­ter fore­sight from now until Christmas.

Do this

Here are two ques­tions you can ask your­self (which I also ask myself this time of year):

• What dead­lines and oth­er impor­tant dates do you need to keep track of through­out the fall? Skim through your cal­en­dar and remind your­self. To get some per­spec­tive on what is ahead of you, cre­ate a time­line — for instance using the Time­line-ser­vice from North­west­ern University’s Knight­lab.
• Would it help if you block days through­out the fall in your cal­en­dar now, dur­ing which you can focus on doing what needs to get done to meet these dead­lines, and even fin­ish them ahead of time?

And here are a few more ques­tions you could ask your­self, but which deal with anoth­er aspect of foresight:

• What oth­er more exten­sive tasks do you have to do through­out the fall that will require quite a lot of your time? These could be larg­er assign­ments, reports, inves­ti­ga­tions, entire projects, and the like.
• What do you need to do to have enough time to work on these? Do you need to reserve days or even weeks to fin­ish them? Would it be appro­pri­ate to work on one or sev­er­al of these tasks for an hour every day for the next few months? Sched­ule or reserve the time you, with cer­tain­ty, know you will need to get it all done.
• Will you even have time to do all of these tasks dur­ing the fall, giv­en that you still want to main­tain a cer­tain stan­dard and qual­i­ty? It can be hard to say now, but if the day should come when you real­ize that you have too much to do — which of all these tasks, assign­ments and projects def­i­nite­ly has the high­est pri­or­i­ty? Which would be the first one to be post­poned? It will only do you good to pre­pare for the worst. Check-in with your boss if you feel the need to make sure he or she is on board with these priorities.

Few­er delays ahead

If you take a firm grip on your time man­age­ment for the next few months now, you will pre­vent those dead­lines step­ping out like a deer into the head­lights and sur­prise you, which they oth­er­wise might. You pre­pare your­self ahead of time for those stress­ful peri­ods you know will come, and hence decrease the risk of feel­ing as stressed as you oth­er­wise might.

What is your way?

What will you do now at the begin­ning of the fall to make sure the rest of it plays out more to your lik­ing? Do you have a trick or method you use when you return to work after some time off? Tell me!

(Fore­sight def­i­nite­ly reduces stress, does­n’t it?