Proper planning is perhaps one of the easiest ways to unhurry (at least parts of) your daily life. However, it demands that you avoid a kind of “laziness” while making certain changes in your habits, in addition to accepting that you can only do a limited number of things with your time.
eBook
Now, inadequate or poor planning causes anxiety, stress, and rushing because it creates a mismatch between the time you actually have and the time you need to finish a task. By contrast, if your planning is adequate, you’ll have enough time to perform a task, which means you don’t need to rush things and can remain tranquil. In addition, you keep control over the rest of your agenda, which would otherwise become an extra cause of worry, anxiety, and hurrying.
An important thing to keep in mind with planning is that tasks often take longer than you think. Unexpected things frequently come up that “eat our time,” leaving us with less time than we anticipated. Therefore, it’s advised to always create a “time buffer” to account for lost time. Although this applies especially to tasks or situations that are new to us, it actually counts for every occasion where we need to get something done.
For instance, if the travel time to your work is about one hour, you shouldn’t leave your home exactly one hour before you want to arrive. It’s much better to leave an hour and a half early to account for unexpected situations like a traffic jam, a tree falling on the road, slippery roads, a flat tire, or whatnot.
Of course, this also means you must get out of bed half an hour earlier. This is where the “lazy” part comes into play, because we often want to stay in bed as long as possible. The reason is that we are typically already exhausted from a hurried life, went to bed too late, or simply want to postpone going to that “shitty” job for as long as possible.
Yet, there’s no way around it. Naturally, you may end up with less time for other things (such as staying in bed longer), but it will finally also make you calmer, less tired, more efficient, less prone to making mistakes, and improve your quality of health and life. It’s a choice.
eBook
Another habit shift may be that of planning a fixed amount of time for your breakfast, for instance fifteen minutes. This not only benefits your health being a proper type of self-care, it also avoids that this important moment of the day already starts as a rushed activity. Try to prepare your breakfast tranquilly and eat it mindfully, without scrolling your phone. If you have some time left, you may spend the rest of it on your phone to catch up with the world.
The scenarios above are just a few examples; countless other situations can be unhurried through proper planning, habit shifts, or small, dedicated routines. Consider allocating extra time for a doctor’s appointment, catching a bus or plane, or driving the kids to school. Alternatively, take preventive action by always reserving five minutes to inspect your car before leaving the house.
Apart from simply planning more time beforehand to carry out a task or creating small, new routines, it’s vital to accept that we can only do a limited number of things in a certain amount of time. It necessarily means we will get fewer things done in a given day if we give things more time, but at least we will do those things calmly and with our best physical and cognitive abilities.
