The Megastore recommends: Long Day Edition.

Sometimes, no matter how hard you try to avoid it, you have a long day. Sometimes, the long day just comes at you like an enraged rhino--what'd you ever do to deserve an enraged rhino, coming at you?
--and you just have to let it roll. Either way, you'll have a better time of it if you

Last Minute Post It (LMPI)

1. Articulate your plan in multiple places. Let's say that the schedule for your long day is such that you have to execute your being-in-all-the-places plan with laser-like focus and superhuman precision. In that case, you better have your plan in your

• Outlook calendar and replicated upon a 
• text document, backed up by a 
• Word document, and actualized on a
• last-minute Post It.

Otherwise, things might slip out of view. I'm telling you: recursive planning! It's the next big thing. I'm already developing the app. (If by 'developing the app' we mean 'thinking about how the Last Minute Post It (LMPI) is already a pretty good app for recursion in planning.' Which we do. That's exactly what we mean.)

Shaun T, you and your abs
need to stop bossing me around.

2. Work out first. Some days, you know that the end of the day is just going to be a cluster-cuss, and there's nothing to be done about it (see: enraged rhino, coming at you). So you better work out first. If that means rolling out of bed to put on yesterday's workout clothes, so be it. If that means that when Shaun T tells you to FOCUS you kind of want to talk back to the dvd and tell him to shove it? So be it. If this means that when you on your yoga mat, first as Superman and then as Rocketman, you kind of feel like a boss? So be it. Work out first and you will be the superhero of your own core. Whatever that means. Just do it. (Not the Nike slogan, just the regular, unbranded admonition.)

3. Eat the breakfast and lunch that give you the power of the righteous. So what if

NOT the snack of the righteous.

Starbucks is out of the bacon gouda artisanal sandwich? Eat oatmeal: the breakfast of the righteous. Bring your lunch from home--and if it's leftover caprese salad and leftover broccoli and a peach, that right there is the lunch of the illuminati. Perhaps less righteously, you may later eat a doughnut (delicious!) at a meeting, and a nut-and-seed bar at another meeting (real good! maybe healthy?), and you might also have a giant diet Coke with lime that you obtained from a drive-thru with your daughter and grandchildren. And who knows what you'll eat at book club (although it will be super tasty). Point is, the righteous breakfast and lunch are the base. Crazy snacks and not-quite-dinner: mitigated.

You're gonna feel so much
better if you do.

4. Just reschedule your last hard thing already, and go do something better. I did this today--I had one appointment at 6 p.m., and if I rescheduled it, I could see my daughter and the grandkids, just barely. There was just enough time. So I did it. I rescheduled, and got to drive with my daughter and crew to Trader Joe's, so we could talk in the car. I got to hear how Deacon finished Zelda, and how Gwen was going to wear her dream-come-true dress. I got to hear about my daughter's travel plans, and I got to gaze upon the sweet, sleeping Naomi. My rescheduled appointment allowed this little dollop of joy and pleasure. Near the end of a long, long day, I call that a win-win.