Planning Time for the Unexpected
By Judith Cullen
© 2015
I remember my Franklin Day Planner fondly. It is such a great system for learning time
management. I used them for years. You
can still get them in their attractive binders as well as the now obligatory
electronic apps. I still use a lot of
the methods from those Franklin
days: making lists, marking what has to be done versus what could be done, open
Os in front of things started but not completed, big Xs on things completed. I
get great satisfaction from making those Os and Xs, like hugs and kisses all
over my daily intentions.
Something has changed from those halcyon days of my Planner. It is something I did not expect to happen,
naturally, and I am not sure that there was a symbol in the Franklin method for marking it, denoting it,
categorizing it. Back in the old days,
blurred into the haze of fond memory, it did not seem that things ever got
totally out of control on any given day.
Somehow, there was a way to write everything down and make things
conform to a plan. But that’s not the
same in my life anymore. Sometimes
something happens that just guts my entire direction. It can be technical, emotional. How am I
supposed to mark the unexpected?
