Increase efficiency with less planning

My wife is planning master. Planning can increase efficiency in two ways:

1. When you have a plan you make big and small jobs fit together having less gaps where you loose time.
2. Having a plan gives you the possibility to get prepared (have everything you need - and everything you might need).

One problem with planning is: For getting the benefit you need to plan in advance - in time to get prepared. When things change, planning needs to be adapted, which is a task to do by itself. Within very dynamic environments too much planning can be a time eater rather than a time saver.

So, too much planning can decrease your efficiency in two ways:

1. Environment and situation may change obsoleting your planning partly or completely (again and again while you adapt).
2. You cannot foresee everything and plan it in the optimum way. Let me give a simple example: While it might be perfectly ok, planning to clean the bathroom at 9, it might be better first to just keep in mind that there is the bathroom to be cleaned. During the day you might just find yourself waiting for a longer download to finish and in this moment remember that there is the bathroom task and fill the waiting gap with cleaning.

So two hints:

• Delay planning where chances are currently high, that things change until due time of the task.
• Leave space for some tasks to accidently fit in at the moment. Keep a todo-list for the tasks that could fit into some typical gaps (wait for the computer to finish a download, backup, copy, installation task; wait for the washing machine to finish; waiting for a train/bus; waiting for your wife/friend to help you with a bigger task).