What Is Your Updated Advice About Temporary Plans?

00:00:00.000 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:00:03.280 | All right.

00:00:05.800 | Let's do one more question here.

00:00:07.920 | What are we at?

00:00:08.560 | We're rolling along here.

00:00:09.640 | Let's do one more deep work question.

00:00:11.180 | This one is from Sparky.

00:00:13.360 | Sparky says, in a 2014 blog post,

00:00:17.880 | you talked about temporary plans.

00:00:20.760 | As I am a professor as well, these longer two to three week

00:00:24.360 | plans seem more useful than a purely weekly plan

00:00:26.680 | for occasions like end of the semester

00:00:28.320 | or a period before spring break or a big conference travel.

00:00:31.360 | Do you have any updated tips or advice for these?

00:00:34.160 | I do, Sparky.

00:00:34.960 | So when I used to talk about temporary plans,

00:00:38.520 | these were either habits you were temporarily trying out

00:00:43.280 | or work heuristics or plans that apply to a time

00:00:47.600 | delimited period, like the next month

00:00:49.200 | or the next two or three weeks.

00:00:50.480 | And I used to email these to myself.

00:00:52.120 | They'd be in my inbox, temporary plans,

00:00:55.520 | and so I could see them in there.

00:00:57.440 | The main change I've made, Sparky,

00:00:58.820 | is I don't do that anymore.

00:01:00.000 | I just have the temporary plans live on my weekly plan.

00:01:04.400 | And when I redo my weekly plan, I'm like, yeah,

00:01:06.360 | this temporary plan is still in effect,

00:01:07.980 | so I'll just keep it there.

00:01:10.360 | And I used to email my weekly plans to myself.

00:01:14.120 | Now I print them out.

00:01:15.480 | Now I just keep--

00:01:16.200 | I don't want to have to look in my inbox at any occasion

00:01:19.320 | when I don't have to.

00:01:20.720 | So that's my one change, is just have that live

00:01:22.840 | on your weekly plan.

00:01:24.000 | At the top of your weekly plan, you

00:01:26.320 | can even label them as ongoing or temporary plans.

00:01:28.920 | And I just have a Word document where my last weekly plan

00:01:32.400 | exists, and I just update it.

00:01:34.560 | When I update it, there's a lot of these bigger picture

00:01:37.240 | temporary plan or heuristic type things that I just keep there.

00:01:40.760 | So that'd be my only change.

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00:01:46.400 | (upbeat music)