At the end of some days, we look back with a twinge of regret: “I didn’t get anything done today.”

The natural follow-on question is, “Did you have a plan?”

It’s one thing when the day doesn’t go as planned. It’s another thing when there wasn’t a plan from the start.

Having a plan helps to storyboard the narrative that you’ll have at the end of the day. Without that framework, when we look back, we’re not confronting a reasonable sense of what we can do within a given day. Instead, we’re weighing what we actually did with our full imagination of what could have been.

That’s not a fair comparison.

Set a plan. Even if it’s loose. Even it if it’s to improvise. Even if it’s to rest.

And at the end of the day, be kind to yourself. (Self-compassion should always be part of the plan.)