Horses have nearly 360* vision because of where their eyes are located.
Their eyes sit on the sides of their heads. If you’re a normal person like me, you’d think that’s fascinating and unique. But for a horse rider, it’s a nightmare.
That amazing vision comes with a small cost. Some nervous horses are easily spooked by things coming up behind them, fearing they might be predators. Which is understandable, right? But how is it a nightmare for a horse rider?
When horses pull carriages and live in urban environments, accidents increase because of their reactions to small things. For a racer, this kind of reaction could cost them a race. And a leg, give or take.
But it all changed around the 19th century.
Blinder engineering changed everything.
The covers of the blinders block their peripheral vision. They make them lose sight of the sides and focus only on what’s ahead.
It gives even the most distracted horse an advantage: amazing focus.
Focus? Won't we love to have blinders on too?
I used to plot every hour of my day. Yes, every hour. Down to the minute I wake up to the moment I sleep. Everything was plotted down. The thought was that to achieve something great, you need to have blinders on, like the horses that race to win.
You’d think I had the most godlike focus and got so much done, did you?
I work in shifts at my job. And it gets super unpredictable and long on busy days. It’s the downside of working in hospitality. I'd plan my day all for it to completely shatter because work would come in between and overlap the things that I planned for the day.
I felt so frustrated and overwhelmed that on such days I feel like I didn't do or get anything done.
But what is it that I'm missing here? I want this “godlike focus" and I want to keep those blinders on all the time. But it's making me hit harder on walls that I continue to ignore.
What is this wall?
Why does it keep hitting me, and why am I struggling to get things done?
Blinders are great for focusing on a task, but it ignores a factor that continues to wreak havoc in your life all the time. It’s called chaos.
What is chaos?
Chaos is spontaneity, constant distractions, and emergencies. Chaos is the unpredictable. We face a pinch of chaos all the time every single day, yet we continue to plan our day and goals as if chaos doesn’t exist.
When work gets busy and overlaps my schedule, that's not just poor planning; it’s chaos doing its thing, creeping behind and saying, “hey, you forgot I’m here!”
The goal is not to plan the “perfect” day, but rather to plan a day that always considers the chaos factor at play. The difference is that instead of neglecting chaos, we make chaos our friend.
This will make you less stressed, but not only that; it makes you way more efficient than you already are.
Why? Because once you acknowledge this factor, it only forces you to reduce the things you do during the day (eliminating waste) and work on things that really matter so that you have time to let chaos creep in.
All that requires you to map out chaos before ever thinking of what things to focus on.
How do you map chaos?
Starting from today, map out 3 hours of your day for chaos. I plot 18:00-21:00 every day for chaos. What’s the catch? You can do anything but work. I don't think or do any work during this period.
But you’d think that’s basically 3 hours wasted
Those 3 hours you’d think are idle time, or free time. But it’s not.
Remember that book you’ve been wanting to read for the longest time that you haven’t been able to find time for?
Use this time marked in chaos to spend at least 15 minutes reading the very first chapter. Or learning a new language, or a new recipe that you always wanted to learn. This little ball of chaos can not only be used to address the spontaneity in our lives, but also for things and hobbies we’ve been delaying because of the lack of time we have.
Our lives are extremely busy. And honestly, 3 hours is a lot to mark for chaos.
Yes, it actually is. But somehow throughout our day, we manage to waste just as many hours without realizing. So add these 3 hours anyway and see how it works out for you.
3 hours gained back, you’d think that's all there is to it.
You can start to plot 1 day a week, 1 week a month & 3 months a year.
This gives you only
5 days a week.
23 days a month.
9 months a year.
Thinking of having a whole year to do something just gives you more room to be lazy and procrastinate. I most certainly know that the most productive time during my day is when I do things with a sense of urgency and within a time limit.
For example, setting 15-minute timers when I meditate, read, and also when I write gives me less time to think about anything else or procrastinate. So instead, I just turn my blinders on to complete the task at hand by setting a time limit.
But how can you actually take advantage of the chaos planning, and how can you get so much done in less time?
Fluency in what you do is the secret hack
If the electricity went off tonight and you had to walk in your room, you still won't have any problem going around the bed, tables, and other furniture in your room. That's because you have been in this room more than a million times.
But take the same analogy and imagine yourself abroad in a completely new country. You’d have to get Google Maps and get guidance from the app. So what takes a local 15 minutes to get somewhere, knowing all the shortcuts, might take you maybe 45 minutes.
The reason is fluency. If you’re not good at something, you will inevitably be slow. Slower than you expect. I will give you a personal example. I'm practicing to get better at writing articles (thus the pieces of content you have been reading recently), and to put a little pressure on myself to get them done imperfectly fast, I set a horrendous goal to finish an article every 3 days.
13 days in, and I am still on my first article; this should’ve been my 4th article this month. But it's the factor of fluency: not doing the proper preparations before writing, not blocking time during the day to write, aiming for perfection, and the time spent on research, which are all symptoms of non-fluency.
Every skill takes time and effort!
To rush into things is to fail quickly. Your first chaos planner won't be good; in fact, it will be really bad. You will make a lot of mistakes and realize different things that you didn’t consider the first time.
But practice, learn, and repeat.
And you will slowly start to notice that you’re getting better. And being on your schedule becomes the new standard instead of struggling to get things done.
Plan with chaos,
Aaish Sareer
Do you struggle with constant self-doubt? Do you feel anxious all the time? It’s a sign that you could be having an unregulated self. Our 27-page guide shows you why this happens, and you’d be surprised by the dramatic change it makes in such a short time. (Click here)
PS: I learned about Chaos Planning from this amazing short book by Sean D’Souza -> Click here to get it for yourself.