When nothing gets done and everything goes wrong, I call it a shit day. Shit days are unavoidable, and here is how you deal with shit days.

The day starts on the wrong foot. You miss the alarm and have to leave the house in a hurry. At the train station, you find out that your train is delayed.

Once you finally reach the office, you discover the worst isn’t over yet. You open your mailbox, only to find a huge mail trail from one of your customers, debating IT security questions already answered in the RFP. Add an urgent bug that isn’t one to the list to get your day started, and then you get a message from a key employee who decided to resign. Yes, via a Microsoft Teams message.

Sounds familiar?

I call such days “shit days.” On shit days, nothing gets done, and everything goes wrong. A shit day never starts at 4 pm, it’s a shit day right from the time you get out of bed, or at the latest when you open your mailbox when you reach the office.

What can you do to avoid shit days?

I’m afraid, nothing. You will have to learn to cope with them.

Here is my 4-step coping strategy for shit days.

Step 1: Curse, be angry

It’s ok to be emotional when a shit day hits the fan. I typically curse and complain about all the evil and idiots out there, and how easy life would be if everyone just did his or her f**ing job.

I’m often told that cursing and being angry don’t solve problems, and maybe that’s true. But it’s a form of therapy for me, so my surroundings have to bear with me on shit days, sorry. Thankfully, there are way more non-shit days than shit days.

Step 2: Paint black

Once I’m beyond step 1, I turn inward on shit days. I’m starting to paint pitch-black. What if the customer with the IT security questions walks away from the contract, and convinces other customers to do the same? What if I can’t find a replacement for that key employee who resigned in due time, and my operation breaks down?

I could go on and on, but if I would, probably step 2 would end with me being convinced that nuclear war will break out any moment.

Thank god even shit days have an end.

Step 3: Evade the trap

The end of a shit day is a perfect occasion to evade the trap. No matter if you leave the office early and go for a walk, drink a glass of wine with your spouse, or go to bed early, you need to evade the trap of step 2 at the end of a shit day.

If you can’t evade the trap, the shit day will grow into a shit week, a shit month, a shit year, and eventually a shit life. That won’t help grow your business or maintain your family ties.

Step 4: Develop contingency plans

To fully appreciate success, you need to remember the times of doubt and hardship. Or in other words, you need to remember the shit days.

Whenever I had a shit day, a few days later the world already looks much better than it did at the height of the shit day.

Instead of forgetting the shit day and moving on, I use the results of step 2 (painting black) to develop contingency plans. What would I do if those worst-case scenarios would hit? How can I increase the resilience of my company against those pitch-black scenarios? How can I diversify the risks?

And that’s the true benefit of shit days. Let them pass, but use them to develop contingency options and scenarios before you forgot the reasons why it was a shit day.