What happens when my week doesn’t go as planned? Life as a human on this planet messy and complex. Technology has automated and normalized (equalized?) much of what we need to do, but sometimes external factors threaten to derail the plan.
Let’s look briefly at this week, for example. I drew up my weekly plan Monday morning and the universe almost immediately had other ideas for me. There’s a great yiddish proverb:
Man plans and God laughs.
.דער מענטש טראַכט און גאָט לאַכט
Der mentsh trakht un Got lakht.
That was definitely this week!
- Monday
- saw XSS Vulnerability Affecting Multiple WordPress Plugins being patched in a Coordinated Security Release.
- Tuesday
- the release of WordPress 4.1.2
- Thursday
- saw not just WordPress 4.2 but also Jetpack 3.5 and a quiet patch of sites to WordPress 4.1.3!
Yes, most WordPress updates are now highly automated, but I still need to double check that sites are behaving as expected and that backups are indeed current and valid. Top it off I have a wicked cough that makes me want to curl up with my kittens and nap.
What fell by the way-side this week? My own work; I’m redesigning this site and working on a few other longer-term projects. They didn’t see as much attention as I’d hoped.
How did I keep from feeling overwhelmed? Each morning while I photograph my coffee I think about the 5 things that I need to get done and record those in my log book. When I stop for lunch I check in and pause to think about how I’m doing on them and what I need to do to make sure they don’t get completely ignored if my day has gone to pieces. That extra lunchtime check-in helps keep me grounded and make sure I’m aware of what the day needs even if it’s not what the day wants.