It’s been a while. A bit. A time. I know… I’m a slacker.
While I write this fresh post directly in Wordpress (my usual process be damned, people) , I know that there are about 3,984 other posts waiting in Evernote to be finished, drafted, written, researched… all those good intentions of posts for the past few months went out the window. Some of these are near to the finish line. Almost done. And yet they sit. Lonely. Waiting. (Sort of like my first-draft-is-finished-and-I-can’t-seem-to-figure-out-what’s-wrong book, but we won’t go there today.)
You see… I started a new job a few months ago. A job, by the way, that I love 💖. I managed to stay connected in the fintech SAASy world that I’ve come to love (doing marketing, not finance… let’s be real.) and joined an amazing company. It’s in tech and loving every minute. (Yes, even the commute ones…well, not all of them.)
I don’t know about you but when I start a new job or a new adventure or a new endeavor, I tend to jump in with both feet and go straight to the bottom of the pool – completely submerged in my new reality. It often means to the exclusion of other brain-requiring activities… like posting on my blog. (Sorry about that. I will return to the regularly schedule geeky tech posts soon… Airtable? Sigh. Glorious. Making a To Do List with Stacks in Evernote? Oh yeah, baby. So much goodness to share ahead.)
It kind of feels like that old cliche, Best Laid Plans… You intend to do so much, you have a plan, a project with due dates, deadlines, a content calendar mapped out..and yet, somehow it all goes awry sometimes. Does that happen to you? I’m going to just believe you’re nodding profusely and that we’re LIKETHIS here.
Life definitely gets in the way, and we let it. That’s not to say that it’s not fun along the way. Just recently, on a business trip to Nashville (yay), I was also able to hit a San Jose Sharks game while I was there… We won! it was an awesome game… and when it was over, a bunch of us fans migrated toward each other to celebrate. 
So when life goes awry, it’s not always something bad. Sometimes, it’s just.. life. Work. Home. Family. You name it, it can mock you for making plans.
So what do you do when it does?
After the full immersion of a new job, I finally feel like I can refocus a little of that energy elsewhere. I’m hoping it means my book will un-stick itself and I can finally get Cordelia’s story out there, and that I can get back to posting the Sassy, geeky tech posts I love to share with you. But in the meantime, I thought I’d share my getting-back-to-my -plans plan. Detours in life happen, change happens…and we can either call our lack of progress a failure or we can find a way to reinvent the direction and move forward again.
1. Reintroduce yourself to your goals and see if they still fit.
All the work I did in mapping out goals, outlining a calendar and path to get there was for a purpose. I know what the end goals were. So it’s time to sit back down with my goals and say hello. Do they still fit? I’m a believer in sticking to a course, but also self-correcting when necessary as life does change.
Sometimes, the change pushes you off a cliff and you can spend the next year just trying to climb back up. Other times, those changes can be wonderful and terrific, and time consuming and it means re-calibrating what’s ahead. Take the time to ask the questions before you try to pick right back up where you left off.
2. Don’t beat yourself up for the detour.
Years ago, when I started on a path to become more healthy, I was incredibly hard on myself for any minor detour I took along the way. If that motivates you, great… It didn’t motivate me. It merely made me feel worse about myself. Once I started accepting that it wasn’t always going to go perfectly, and that it was okay to detour every once in a while…once I set reasonable, realistic goals and a realistic path and timeline to get there, I did.
Sometimes, it just takes longer than you think and that’s okay.
3. Be Real with Your Expectations
Change is hard. When I create plans, I can feel pretty darn lofty about what I think I can accomplish. I often forget that belief is based on “perfect life.” I don’t know about you, but I have a tendency to plan with no hiccups in my mind when I’m energized by something new. The power of my will is going to just move me right through those phases where changing my daily routine and adjusting is about as easy as waking my twelve year old son in the morning.
It rarely happens that way with my best first intentions… Usually it means starting off slower, lighter than I may have expected. So visit what you’ve expected, how fast, and how often. Is it reasonable with how life has changed? Do you need to adjust there?
4. Rebuild the plan
Whatever your plan was… write a book, a series of blog posts, skydiving, dance lessons, plan a travel trip… rebuild your plan. Keep the pieces that excite you…and with a little more understanding and patience with yourself, add in new due dates, timelines and a cadence you can live with — not when life helps, but when life hinders.
I plan to do all of the above… and even as I write this post, I know my unrealistic expectations of what I can probably accomplish in the next year are still unrealistic… but maybe that’s just part of my process, too. So I’ll keep on truckin’.
What about you? What do you do when your plans and goals go awry? I’d love to know how you get back into gear.