(I'm Injured) When Life Interrupts Your Plans: The Real Purpose of a Productivity System

Speaker A: Welcome to Get Organized at Work. I'm your host, Kayla Fahey Arndt, healthcare leader, mom of three and your go to guide for ditching the chaos and taking control of your workday. This is the show where we turn overwhelming to do lists into clear, actionable plans so you can crush your goals and show up as your best self at work and in your life. Whether you're here for strategies to stay ahead or systems to simplify your workday, you're in the right place. Let's get organized, have some fun, and make this year your best year in your career yet. Let's dive in. Hello, hello, welcome, or welcome back to Get Organized at Work podcast. My friends and colleagues, today is going to be a little bit different, but hopefully you'll enjoy this episode. Normally we're talking about systems, leadership, productivity, and how to create more clarity in your workday. But today I want to tell you a personal story. And it starts with me doing grapevines in my kitchen. Yeah. Not during a race. Not on the trail. Not while attempting some ridiculous athletic feat in my house wearing my husband's cozy socks. I took one wrong step, tripped and caught my foot funny on a chair while trying to mop my kitchen floor and I broke my toe. And just like that, months of training has come to a screeching halt. If you've been following along for a while, you know I've been training for a half marathon. It's not my first one, it's actually my third one. I did two last year. Those are my first two. And my favorite was on Grandma's marathon weekend up in Duluth. I'm from Minnesota, and so this is a big weekend. I'm actually supposed to run the Gary Bjorkland Half Marathon. So I haven't been just training casually. Not like a, um, maybe I'll do it if I kind of feel like it. I've been actually putting in a ton of miles. Early mornings, late evenings, the long runs. I just finished a 10 mile run last weekend in the dark. I've been in strength training and I've been super consistent. I worked really hard for this and I was finally feeling strong. I ran a 10k race at the beginning of May and had a personal best. And I was like, yes, I'm finally fast again. I had fitness, I was confident, I had a lot of momentum, and I was genuinely like, okay, I cannot wait to race the crap out of this race. Sorry for the language. Then 30 minutes after, uh, I wouldn't say it was dancing while mopping. I'll Just say the fancy footwork in my house. I did get an X ray. I pulled off the sock, and I was like, something's not right. This hurts really bad. And, yeah, broken toe right at the joint. In six to eight weeks of recovery, no running, half marathon, canceled. Not to mention the triathlon I was just gonna, like, randomly do the week after because my husband was encouraging me to do that. So just like that. Can't run now. Logically, I know this isn't the end of the world. It's just a toe. I was joking with people in the doctor's office, like, do I even really need this one? It's the middle toe. Like this. Does it really do anything? I still want to race. And they're like, no, you really need to heal this so you don't have future foot problems so you can race in the future, so you can have good mobility in the future. People go through much harder things than a broken toe. So I'll heal. I will run again. There will be other races. But I think sometimes we underestimate the emotional impact of losing something we've been working towards. Because I was driving home from the doctor's office, and all of a sudden, I got that big gulp, like, that tightness in my throat, and I was like, oh, man, I think I'm gonna cry. Like, I was like, I guess I really wanted to do this. Which, when you're training for a goal or in the middle of something, you don't always stop to think about how bad you want it until you can't have it. I wasn't actually grieving the race, though. I was grieving the future version of myself I had been imagining I had been thinking about the version of me that'd be crossing the finish line. That very morning, I was texting my mom, like, okay, if you guys come to the race, here's what time I would come. And this is when I think I'll finish the version that I was going to prove to myself like, she is capable of this. The version that had been building towards something for months. Two years postpartum, um, feeling the most fit I've ever been. And suddenly that picture disappeared. And maybe you've experienced something similar. Maybe a promotion that didn't happen or a project that got canceled, a business goal that fell apart. Maybe you've experienced a health issue or a family crisis. A plan, um, that simply didn't go according to your plans. The specifics of all of this can be different, but the feeling is the same. You were ready, and then life happened. This got me thinking about something. Most productivity advice assumes ideal conditions. It assumes you'll have the energy all the time, all the motivation, and you'll have focus. But that's not real life. Real life is messy. Kids get sick, projects get delayed, people quit, Parents need help. Unexpected opportunities appear and unexpected problems appear. And sometimes you break your toe doing grapevines in your kitchen. I just wanna be clear. I wasn't actually dancing, but if you know me, you know I could have been. The real test of any system isn't whether it works when life is easy. The real test is whether it works when life gets tough. Okay, so this is the question I've been asking myself since I broke my toe a few days ago. What happens when you stop? What happens when your routine gets interrupted? What happens when you can't execute the plan exactly the way you intended? Because here's what I've noticed. Most people don't struggle because they stop doing the thing. They struggle because they don't know how to restart. We always talk about this, right? That starting is the hardest part. And that's because you lose momentum, you lose confidence, you lose clarity. And before long, you're staring at a giant pile of un. Unfinished commitments wondering, like, where do I even start? That's where the overwhelm begins. Not because you're incapable, because you've lost that thread. This is something I think we get wrong. We think systems exist to help us do more. But I don't think that's their most important job. I think systems exist to help us recover. A good system holds your place. It. It's like a bookmark. A good system remembers what matters. When your brain is overwhelmed. It's like a little cursor, like, here's where you were. A, um. Good system preserves context. It reminds you, like, oh, yeah, that's why I was doing this. And a good system gives you a way back, because eventually all of us are going to get knocked off course. The goal isn't perfection. The goal is resilience. One of the reasons I built the ultimate OneNote Hub template wasn't to create some complicated productivity machine or like a one size fits all productivity robot that you can plug into. I was trying to build something that supports real life, actual life, because real life isn't linear. Some weeks you're on fire, you're thriving, and some weeks you're surviving. Some seasons you're growing, and some seasons you're healing. And your system has to support all of those seasons because we're human. And that's why? The hub includes things like weekly planning prompts, project tracking, standard work, goal reviews, and even monthly check ins. And it's not because I expect you to execute perfectly every day, but because when life interrupts your plans, you have a place or a bookmark to return to. You don't have to rebuild everything from scratch every time you, quote, fall off the wagon, you simply pick up where you left off. All right, so what is my plan now? What am I doing? Honestly, I'm giving myself permission to be pretty disappointed. Like, I'm pretty down and out about it, and I think that's important. I was visualizing myself literally at the 50th anniversary of Grandma's marathon weekend thinking like, this is the most amazing thing ever and I'll still go and support my husband and probably get some pretty cool footage, but I won't be there crossing the finish line. So, yeah, I'm bummed and I think that's okay. I'm not pretending this doesn't matter and I'm not rushing to look on the bright side. Like, I'm disappointed. That's all right. But also I'm reminding myself that this goal hasn't changed. When I went to update my goals, which you guys know that I do, that it said, finish Gary Bjorklund half marathon with this pace that I had set for myself. And I was thinking like, well, maybe it's not this half. Maybe it's just the timelines changed and it's a different race. The path there changed, but my goal hasn't. I still want to run. I still want to hit a personal best. I still want to race. And of course, while doing that, I still want to build my business, so serve this community. And I still want to live a big, joyful, sparkly life. And it's just going to look a little bit different for a while. So if you're in a season where life has interrupted your plans, I want you to hear this. You don't have to start over. It's okay to begin exactly where you left off. You are not behind. You've not lost all of your progress. You're simply navigating a detour. And a good system can help you find your way back. Because the measure of success isn't whether you stay on the path perfectly. That's pretty boring. It's whether you keep returning to it, even after setbacks, even after disappointment, and even after broken toes. How embarrassing. Thank you so much for being here. And if you'd like to hear more personal side of this journey, what I'm learning emotionally during recovery and how I'm processing the disappointment and what I'm doing to stay mentally strong during these next weeks. I'll be sharing that exclusively inside the Get Organized at, uh, Work Community. You can find the link for that in the show notes. All right, until next time. Remember, you don't need another productivity hack. You need a system that can support you through real human life. All right, I'll talk to you next week.