It's Sunday night and you're thinking about the week ahead.
Actually, thinking is generous.
You've mentally entered Tuesday, realized there are approximately seventeen things that need to happen between 3:30 and 7:00, remembered something you forgot to do last Friday and are now lying in bed wondering how everyone else seems to manage having a life.
Fine.
We'll make a plan.
Out comes the Notes app.
First, the obvious stuff. Appointments. Meetings. Practices. Things that absolutely have to happen.
Then we start filling in the rest.
If I get up thirty minutes earlier Monday, I can probably knock that out before everyone wakes up. I'll move this to Wednesday. That call shouldn't take more than twenty minutes. I'll put groceries here. Workout there.
Oh! And last Tuesday completely fell apart because I didn't leave enough time between those two things, so this week we'll add a buffer.
Look at us learning.
Honestly, by the time I'm done with something like this, I can feel noticeably better.
Nothing about the week has actually changed. But now it has boxes.
And apparently boxes help.
I love a plan. This should surprise absolutely no one after my confession about trying to solve half my life with a spreadsheet.
A good plan genuinely does make life easier. I don't want us to start acting like calendars are a character flaw.
But there is a difference between using a plan to organize your week and quietly needing the plan to assure you that your week is going to be okay.
I know that difference because I've done both.
The first one sounds like, Here's what I'm going to try to do this week.
The second one is more like, Excellent. I have now accounted for every possible variable and therefore nothing unexpected will happen.
Cute.
Then Wednesday arrives.
A meeting runs long. Somebody needs something you didn't know they were going to need. Your kid wakes up sick. A task you gave thirty minutes takes an hour and a half.
And now you're not simply adjusting the schedule.
You're irritated.
Then overwhelmed.
And depending on the week, approximately one inconvenience away from announcing that the entire day is shot.
Which is interesting, isn't it?
Because if the plan were only a tool, changing it shouldn't feel quite so personal.
But sometimes the plan wasn't just telling us what to do next.
It was telling us, You're okay. You've got this. Nothing is going to sneak up on you.
So when life ignores our beautifully organized calendar—and the audacity of it, really—we lose more than the schedule.
We lose the feeling the schedule was giving us.
That's the part I think is worth noticing.
Because control doesn't always look like someone barking orders or insisting everything be done her way.
Sometimes it looks incredibly responsible.
Prepared.
Organized.
Thoughtful.
Sometimes it has color coding.
And none of those things are bad.
The question is what happens when the system gets interrupted.
Can you adjust?
Or does one change make everything suddenly feel like too much?
I've had to learn that my reaction to a disrupted plan tells me considerably more than the plan itself ever could.
If I can move something to Thursday and carry on with my life, great. The plan is doing its job.
If one unexpected phone call makes me feel like I have completely lost control of the week...
Okay.
We're probably not talking about time management anymore.
We're talking about how much certainty I apparently expected that little calendar to provide.
And there's another version of this that doesn't look nearly as frantic.
It looks like waiting.
I'll start when things calm down.
I'll do it when this season is over.
Once the kids' schedules aren't so crazy.
After this project wraps up.
When I have more time.
When I know exactly what I'm doing.
That can sound incredibly reasonable.
Sometimes it is reasonable. Timing matters. Capacity matters. There are seasons when adding one more thing would be ridiculous.
But sometimes “when things calm down” is just the prettier version of “when I can guarantee this won't be messy.”
And good luck with that.
Because I have yet to encounter the magical season of adulthood where everybody's schedules cooperate, work stays predictable, nobody gets sick, nothing breaks, your energy remains consistent and every week unfolds exactly as anticipated.
If you find it, please send directions.
Until then, we have to build lives that can survive a terrible Tuesday.
That's what I've started thinking about differently.
A good plan shouldn't require life to cooperate with it.
It should help you move through life when it doesn't.
And that changes what I'm looking for when I plan.
I'm not trying to eliminate every unknown anymore. I couldn't if I wanted to.
I'm trying to know what matters enough that when something shifts, I can decide what moves with it.
That's a very different kind of stability.
Because stability isn't nothing unexpected happens.
It's something unexpected happened, and I still know what to do with myself.
Think about how many times you've already done that.
You've had weeks go completely sideways and figured them out. You've rearranged things on the fly. You've handled situations you never would've voluntarily put on the calendar.
Probably with some stress.
Possibly with tears.
Perhaps with a few words Jesus and I had to discuss later.
But you figured it out.
That's why I'm starting to think we put an awful lot of pressure on our plans to provide something they were never capable of providing.
A calendar can tell me where I'm supposed to be Tuesday at 2:00.
It cannot promise me Tuesday at 2:00 is going to go well.
That's not its job.
And strangely enough, accepting that makes planning feel more useful, not less.
I can make the plan.
I can prepare well.
I can create the buffer and organize the week and, yes, absolutely color code the calendar if that makes my little strategic-organizer heart happy.
Then I can let the plan be a plan.
Not a guarantee.
Not proof that I'm doing life correctly.
Not the one thing standing between me and total unraveling.
Just a tool.
Because when the week inevitably does something I didn't account for, I don't actually need the plan to save me.
I've adapted before.
I've figured things out before.
I've walked through seasons where there wasn't a plan at all.
And most importantly, I'm still here.
The plan didn't hold me together.
I did.
Or, more accurately for me, God held me while I figured out what to do next.
So yes, make the plan.
Just don't ask it to promise you a life it can't deliver.
Want to keep going with this conversation?
🎧 Ep 58: Letting Go of Control: Overthinking, Anxiety, and the Myth of the Perfect Day →