Best-Laid Plans and COVID-19
I imagine a lot of you have heard the adage, the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry," - it's common enough parlance, but I realized I had no idea where it came from and so I decided to go looking. And in no time at all, I found the poem To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest With the Plough, November, 1785 by Robert Burns. That's quite the descriptive title. I'd like to share that poem with you now - it was originally written in the Scots-language, so I'll be reading from a translation. If poetry isn't your thing, feel free to skip the next minute or so.
To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest With the Plough, November, 1785
by Robert Burns
Little, cunning, cowering, timorous beast,
Oh, what a panic is in your breast!
You need not start away so hasty
With bickering prattle!
I would be loath to run and chase you,
With murdering paddle!
I'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
And justifies that ill opinion
Which makes you startle
At me, your poor, earth-born companion
And fellow mortal!
I doubt not, sometimes, that you may steal;
What then? Poor beast, you must live!
An odd ear in twenty-four sheaves
Is a small request;
I will get a blessing with what is left,
And never miss it.
Your small house, too, in ruin!
Its feeble walls the winds are scattering!
And nothing now, to build a new one,
Of coarse green foliage!
And bleak December's winds ensuing,
Both bitter and piercing!
You saw the fields laid bare and empty,
And weary winter coming fast,
And cozy here, beneath the blast,
You thought to dwell,
Till crash! The cruel plough passed
Out through your cell.
That small heap of leaves and stubble,
Has cost you many a weary nibble!
Now you are turned out, for all your trouble,
Without house or holding,
To endure the winter's sleety dribble,
And hoar-frost cold.
But Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often askew,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!
Still you are blessed, compared with me!
The present only touches you:
But oh! I backward cast my eye,
On prospects dreary!
And forward, though I cannot see,
I guess and fear!
It always seemed odd to me to talk about the best-laid plans of mice because I, well, didn't think mice made all that many plans. But it makes much more sense in the context of a farmer plowing over a mouse's home and destroying its hope of making it through the winter.
And it is claimed that is precisely how Robert Burns came up with poem - plowing over mouse nest and reflecting on what that meant for the poor fellow. It isn't hard then to see how that compares to everyone else. Perhaps if the mouse hadn't built its nest right there, it would have been fine, but being a mouse, it couldn't have known the field was going to be plowed. And that is the point here, often our plans go awry because of something that we haven't planned for. Something outside of our scope of knowledge. And that brings us to today's episode because while coronavirus was on my radar, I had no idea how it was going to shape my life for the coming months.
One of the things I can struggle with the most from my ADHD is dealing with things when my plans fall through. It is truly one of the areas that can completely debilitate me. I remember once deciding on a fun breakfast and finding that I had to clean the pan that I needed to use. That in itself wasn't so bad - I can clean a pan - but then the sink was absolutely filled with dishes to be cleaned. I was overwhelmed with what I needed to do and ended up just laying down on the living room floor and staring at the ceiling.
I was so frustrated that I couldn't bring myself to do anything. And it wasn't just being frustrated at the dishes in the sink. Sure, that played a role, but my frustration also came from the fact that I was frustrated about my frustration. I knew that I should be able to just deal with them, but the fact that they threw me off so much made me angry at myself. I wished that I could take that curveball in stride, but instead, I was on the living room floor being mad about it - so I was mad about that too. It was an awful snowball of emotion that left me drained and unable to do anything, and the more I thought about it, the more it debilitated me. I truly felt like I could do nothing, and there was no way to dig myself out of the hole. And yes, this all started because of some dishes in the sink.
Well, specifically how the pans were stacked in the sink and the fact that they had water in them and how that made the whole process of getting to the cleaning part of the task that much harder. I digress, I have some thought on how dirty dishes should be stacked. Look when you've got a system it makes the whole process so much easier.
I'm sure that many of you have also had incidents where something that others would deem as small has gotten you off track. And it's really hard to talk about these things because they are embarrassing. They are frustrating, and they make you feel like maybe you just aren't ready for this whole being an adult thing. I'm only mildly comfortable talking about this story now because it happened years ago, and I've had a lot of time to process it. I've still got a part of me that arguing that because I wasn't able to deal with those dishes that there is some part of me that must be broken. But I've spent enough time battling that particular inner voice to disregard those thoughts - "thanks, for your input, but I'm going to seek a second opinion on this one."
And not to minimize those little voices, here's how mine is sounding now: it is telling me that I can't publish this because everyone listening is going to lose respect for me and that this isn't me being vulnerable in a good way, this is just me showing an example of how I am a fundamentally flawed human being. Well, screw that. A few months ago, I talked about how I try and follow my anxiety into positions of strength, and I can feel the hackles on my neck, going up as I think about this. That's a pretty good sign that it needs to stay. As uncomfortable as it is, I think it's actually pretty important to include some of our lowlights.
So as I was saying, I can find myself debilitated when my plans go awry. Even simple things like needing to washing the dishes when I'm not expecting to. This might seem like an argument that we don't need to plan at all, but in fact, it kind of means that I should do more planning. The dishes weren't what I was planning on doing - cooking breakfast was - it was the fact that I hadn't accounted for the dishes that threw me. I didn't have a way to get back on track without doing that step first. Had I been in the kitchen when I decided I wanted to cook that fancy breakfast, I would have seen the dishes in the sink and already known what I needed to do.
But that isn't what happened. I was hungry (and let's be honest, one thing that absolutely makes ADHD worse is hunger), and I had no contingencies in place. I didn't have a second plan, and so I kind I guess this means that our first steps in any plan is making sure we're well-fed, but beyond that, when we're planning, we've got to work on thinking about what can go wrong. This sometimes seems counter-intuitive as we want things to go right, right? So why should we think about how they could go wrong?
But this is a crucial step in planning because if we spend a little time thinking about what can go wrong, then we can actually make a realistic plan. Going back to the poem we started the show off with let's think about if we were that little mouse and we knew a little bit more - we could imagine that building our house in a field might have some drawbacks. Sure we're close to a food source, but we're also at the mercy of the farmer. We might not have the Rats of NIMH to help us move our house when Robert Burns comes to plow, so we need to think through our potential problems before they arise.
And we can think about these things in two ways because we've got things we've got influence over and things that we don't. Right now, I don't have that much influence over the coronavirus - I don't have much influence over what the government is doing about it. I don't have much influence over how long I'm going to have to stay at home, but I do have influence over how I plan my day. This doesn't mean that when I plan my day, it is going to go exactly as I intend it - and we've already addressed how a plan can go awry. But what I can do is look at shaping my day in a way that is going to give me the flexibility while also giving me the direction I need to actually get things done.
I'm sure many of you are in a similar boat as I am in that you had plans for this year. There were things that I was working on that are suddenly not viable. Just two months ago, I was starting to work on developing some courses to go along with this podcast, but with the amount of time I can devote to work right now, that isn't reasonable to keep on my plate.
Later this month I was supposed to go to one of my good friend's weddings, that's not going to happen either. There are a lot of plans that I had for this year that are looking like they won't happen.
And in a lot of ways, it is hard to feel bad that things are working out the way I want them to. My family is healthy, and I'm still working - there are a lot of people that can't say that right now, so it can feel disingenuous to complain about how I don't get to go to my friend's wedding.
So real quick, let me give you permission to feel bad about the things you are missing and the things that you wanted to do but can't now. It's okay to feel bad about them. It isn't a competition on who's got it worse. Everyone is getting a bum deal here. Yes, some people have it worse, but that doesn't negate your emotions.
At the same time, though, we've got to work on accepting that our plans really aren't going to work out. Part of my plan for this year was to increase my social circle and get a little more exercise by joining a master's frisbee team. The first practice was slated for the beginning of March and ended up being canceled out of what was at the time, an abundance of caution - now it just seems like common sense, but there were a lot of people willing to go to that practice despite the risk. And now I can't imagine the club season happening at all.
So we can try and look at this through the lens of what we can and can't control. And it's helpful that I had a why for joining the team - I wanted to increase my fitness and work on being more social. I can't control when the frisbee team is going to happen, but I can still work on those goals.
Part of the problem, of course, is that we don't really know how much longer this all is going to go on. In March, we were told that things might be looking better by April - now we're hearing things might be getting better by May. I'm reasonably confident that come May we're going to be hearing about how we need to extend into June - and unfortunately, until we have a real way to mitigate the risks, things aren't going back to normal. I don't have the answers here, so I can only go by what seems the likeliest scenario based on what I've read. I genuinely don't want to depress anyone with this - I know it sucks, but we've also got to keep the reality in mind if we're going to start planning.
This uncertainty of time frame made it hard to consider figure what working at home for the next month was going to look like for me. Because hey if in a couple weeks I'm going back to my old routine anyways, why make a new one, right? But if things honestly do go on for a few more months, then planning out that new routine is vital. It's what's going to make the difference between me being able to stay sane versus going on hike and Hansel and Gretel-ing my kids.
This means I'm going to be sitting down with my yearly plan and figuring out what I need to re-jigger. So yeah, I won't be able to join the frisbee team, but since I can still work on my fitness, I can adjust my goals. One thing to keep in mind here, though, is to give yourself some slack. We're taking on a lot right now, and don't expect yourself to be killing it on the productivity side of things. When I'm looking at those goals, I need to be realistic with myself and pair down what I want to do. I know there is a ton of stuff going around on social media about how we can use this time to better ourselves and how if we don't, it means it was never about having enough time - well, I'll try to be polite about it, but those people can shut the front door. Seriously. We're going through a pandemic. It's more than understandable if you're struggling right now. Assess what's a reasonable amount that you can accomplish - don't push it - and I know that can be hard.
One last point I'd like to make here is that you also might need to reassess what your priorities are. Part of my yearly planning podcast series focused on coming up with a life domain that you wanted to focus on for the year - that focus might need to change. Your top goals for the year might need to change. Even if a pandemic wasn't going on it would be fine to reassess those goals and choose a different direction to go in. Planning doesn't mean we have to follow the plan "come hell or high water", rather planning is a method of directing our ship. Sometimes we're going to need to adjust course because we didn't see the rocks ahead of us and sometimes we are going to need to adjust our course because our destination has changed. There's no reason that we need to be beholden to our past selves - we forge our paths in the present.
This Episode’s Top Tips
No one really wanted to hear me read poetry.
When our plans go wrong it can be frustrating and debilitating. We can mitigate some of this by thinking through what can go wrong with our plans and coming up with contingencies.
Right now a lot of our long-term plans are disarray - while it is hard to plan for the future because when we are faced with uncertainty, we can still look at our underlying goals and base our planning around them.
Give yourself a break - it's okay to do less. While it is still a good idea to plan our days, we can also just plan on doing less.
