Day 216: On Accounting for Flexibility in Your Plans
第216天：关于考虑计划的灵活性
Another drawback of daily plans is that they lack flexibility. They deprive the person of the chance to make choices along the way, so the person feels locked into a rigid and grinding sequence of tasks. Life rarely goes exactly according to plan, and so the daily plans can be demoralizing as soon as you fall off schedule. With a monthly plan, you can make adjustments. If a delay arises one day, your plan is still intact.
每日计划的另一个缺点是缺乏灵活性。
它们剥夺了一个人在过程中改变选择的机会，因此我们就会觉得自己好像被困在一系列僵化的任务中一般。
其实生活很少会完全按照计划进行，因此，一旦偏离了计划，每日计划就会让人士气低落。
如果是月度计划，你就可以灵活做出调整。
如果某天出现了延误，你的计划依然会完好无损。
—Roy Baumeister
I’m a fan of daily routines: writing a specific number of words, sticking to the same number of consumed calories, or learning the same number of words in a foreign language every day.
我是日常习惯的粉丝：每天坚持写特定数量的单词，摄入相同数量的卡路里，或者学习相同数量的外语单词。
However, at the same time, having experienced on more than a few occasions that life often doesn’t go exactly according to the plan and disruptions are bound to happen, I account for some flexibility in my plan. This way, when I mess up one day, it doesn’t have to affect my entire progress.
但与此同时，我也不止一次地经历过，生活往往不会完全按照计划进行，难免会出现中断，因此我在计划中考虑了一些灵活性。
这样，即使有一天我搞砸了，也不会影响我的整体进度。
For example, whenever I’m tweaking my caloric intake, I try to focus more on what happens during an entire week or month than any specific day. This way, if I mess it up one day by eating too little or too much, it doesn’t matter because I can make up for it the next day or a week later. Granted, it carries the risk of making regular exceptions and setting a precedent, so it’s important to always plan exactly when you’re going to adjust for a day of variance .
例如，每当我调整卡路里摄入量时，我都会试着更多地关注一周或一个月内发生的事情，而不是某一天。
这样一来，如果某天我吃得太少或太多而搞砸了，也没关系，因为我可以在第二天或一周后再弥补。
当然，这样做也有可能会经常出现例外情况和开创先例的风险，因此，始终准确计划何时调整一天的差异就变得非常重要。
Recently I set for myself a goal to write 10 daily entries for this book for 10 days so that after the end of this sprint, I will have written entries for 100 days, or almost 30% of the book.
最近，我给自己定了一个目标，每天为这本书写 10 篇文章，持续 10 天，这样在冲刺阶段结束后，我将写满 100 天的文章，也就是这本书的近 30%。
If I were to only count it as successful if I stuck to writing 10 entries every day, without allowing myself any kind of flexibility, I’d have failed on the eighth day, which I spent outdoors. However, knowing that such a disruption would happen, I wrote 14 entries the day before my trip and 6 in the early morning before my departure.
如果我坚持每天写 10 篇文章才算成功，而不允许自己有任何灵活性，那么第八天我就失败了，因为这一天我是在户外度过的。
但是，我知道这种情况会发生，所以我在出发前一天写了 14 篇文章，在出发前的清晨写了 6 篇文章。
Thanks to accounting for flexibility, I avoided the demoralizing effect of dropping the ball, and after 10 days, I had also completed my goal of writing 100 entries in total.
由于考虑到了灵活性，我避免了丢三落四的影响，10 天后，我也完成了总共写 100 篇文章的目标。
When setting new routines and goals, allow yourself some flexibility, too. If you have a daily quota, don’t immediately count it as a failure if you don’t perform it for one day. Work a little more for the next several days and instead of falling off the bandwagon, you’ll still achieve your original goal.
在制定新的目标时，也要给自己留出一些灵活性。
如果你有一个每日定额，如果有一天没有完成，不要立即认为这是失败。
在接下来的几天里多做一点，你就不会掉队，依然能够实现最初的目标。