Twenty-four weeks after the first day of the second new year

That’s a question that often comes to our minds at the beginning of the day, when we wonder what kind of day we’ll have or schedule our tasks for it, and at its end, when we ask ourselves what kind of day we had and try to assess whether we did what we had set out to do, whether the day was as productive as we wanted it to be, whether we can be satisfied with it—and with ourselves—or not. And the question in both its forms is not asked only with regard to our work. All aspects of our lives have a place in it, everything that makes us, our lives, our days, what they are.

The problem is that this question that should be helping us create an efficient framework within which we can get things done, could instead too easily become a rollercoaster of discouraging thoughts and emotions that hinder us. If too often you get up in the morning thinking “I’m going to have a good day today” and then you set out to follow your plan for the hours ahead, and yet for some reason—be it unexpected occurrences that divert your attention elsewhere or some other cause—you don’t do what you’re supposed to be doing, so that come evening you end up thinking, “I didn’t get anything done today, what did I do all day?”, then pretty soon your morning outlook of the day will turn from encouraging to a worrying, perhaps even panicky, “ I have to have a good day today!” which is more likely to lead to a stressful attempt to have a productive day. And stress tends to lead to self-criticism and to a biased outlook at ourselves and at the results of our actions, and eventually to discouragement and exhaustion. Pretty soon we end up waging a war of attrition against our days and against ourselves. We are sure that we haven’t done enough, we don’t do enough, and now we won’t possibly be able to do enough to “save” the plans we have set for ourselves.


When that happens, we become certain that we’re doomed to fail. But the fact is that regardless of how we perceive our days and our progress, we do get things done. Not always as quickly as we thought we would or within the timeframes we might have wanted to, but so what? When did we become so entrapped in our calendar, or in the minutes moving forward on that clock we can’t escape in the corner of our laptop screen, on our phone, and in too many other places around us? Stressing about when we do things leads to our doing less than we’ve planned, not more. It impedes our ability to concentrate and our creativity, and it certainly takes all the enjoyment out of what we do. And what good is that?

We can’t control everything, and so we can’t plan for everything. Events do happen than can derail our plans for the day. A neighbor of Author’s is just now standing in the street outside, watching a tow truck take away her car, instead of being on her way to work, as she always is at this hour. There go her plans for the day, simply because her car wouldn’t start. Things happen. She can give up on her day, or she can do what she can with the day ahead, get at least something of what she’d planned done or perhaps move things around. Yes, we need to contend with deadlines. Work deadlines, chore deadlines, family event deadlines, and even fun deadlines, these exist too. But not all deadlines are rigid. Flexibility is inherent in some way or another in some of the tasks we are required to complete, and for the ones that are rigid, some deadlines we will make and some we will miss, but life will go on, we will achieve our goals.

The problem is that we tend to forget what we have done, while what we haven’t done stays with us as a failure, even when it’s just life that came between us and completing whatever it is we feel we should have done better. “You don’t understand,” you might say, “I did mess up. I delayed, I chose to do other things instead of what I was supposed to, I could’ve done but didn’t,” and whatever else you tell yourself to convince yourself you can’t do anything right. Well, you know what? Maybe you do have some responsibility for some of what you didn’t get done. Note the double “some”. And yes, what you were responsible for, you need to learn from the experience and take step after step toward doing better. But that’s just it: there is time, there is a way, and there is no sense in giving up because of the past because there is a future ahead.

And you know what, whatever it is you’re feeling you should have done and didn’t, think about it: you haven’t given up on other things in your past. There are plenty of things, no matter how small, that you did again and again until you got it right, that you pushed yourself to achieve, whether as a kid or as an adult. Do the same here. Even when you doubt yourself or are afraid, if it’s important to you, if you have the tiniest bit of faith in whatever your goal is and in yourself—and you do, otherwise you wouldn’t have tried in the first place—try again.

And another word here, and Author thinks this would be a good place for her tip for this week: we tend to compare too much. We compare our today to our yesterday, and we compare ourselves to family, to friends, and to the too many complete strangers to whose lives we are exposed in this era of unlimited information. It’s too easy to feel that we are not doing as well as others or enough compared to others, and in today’s impossible rush of life it’s far too easy to feel that we are too slow. If this comparison energizes you, encourages you to do more, to dare fulfill a dream because others have, to think, “they can, so I can too,” then that’s fine. But if it makes you feel inadequate, then that’s no good. We look too much around us, and not enough at ourselves. You should know what you want, what’s important to you, what will make you happy. You should know who you are, what your strengths and weaknesses are, so that you can build properly toward fulfilling your goals and your dreams. You should be yourself, and maybe, just a little, you should let yourself be.