Sometimes what you need is a coffee and a moment to breathe, and sometimes you feel like you can't afford even that. Now, yes, that can be insensitive to say, when you think about the people who can't afford to buy coffee, but I mean that coffee in a figurative form.
Yesterday I had one of those days, when I felt that things were burying me under. I was constantly doing something, tending small tasks for a variety of spheres of my life - politics, union, office, personal, family - and from time to time I felt like I wasn't even making any advances on anything. Sometimes I also caught myself just staring blankly at the computer screen and had no idea what was I watching or what had happened in the last 20 minutes or so of the series or movie I was supposed to be watching. I was checking out.
I caught myself thinking why was I so lost, when I have a planner and I should be able to use the tools I have learned to organize my tasks in a manageable manner, and give myself plenty of breathing space, but a look at my planner told me that I was busy with things I have not planned at all. And I guess that was the root of what was going on with me: I was swarmed by urgent tasks and I didn't take the time to step back and make a plan to tackle them all. I was just too busy dealing with what was flying into my lap. Work plan ideas, help with contacting people, sending documents and e-mails other people are responsible for, signing myself for things that do interest me, but for which I have no time. And I wasn't looking at my planner.
You see, time is very much like money, but we don't have a time-credit card. With time, just like with money, we can imagine that we have more of it than what we really have. We may end up signing up to do more things that what we are capable of doing, or what we can afford with our energy level. Too many groups, too many get-togethers, too many meetings, too many appointments, too many plans. Then, when we realize, it happens that we don't have the time to do them all, and we start pushing and borrowing time from one thing to the next, doing things at the same time, squeezing tasks in time slots we view as "unproductive", and then we wonder why are we so wired up and why are we so tired. It's almost like maxing your credit card.
A planner is like a checking book for your time. If you stop seeing every single line (hour) as a slot that needs to be "productive", you can actually see where do you have time to do something, and how much time can you give to a given task. Time will also show you to learn and pencil in down times and transition times. Don't deal with tasks and requests as soon as they get to you, no matter how others say it's so urgent. Make your own decisions, and be willing to decline. If it's so urgent and you don't have the time to do it - and you must respect your personal times too - then kindly tell the person that they should find someone else to deal with it. Oh, there are recriminations and guilty trips? Well, if someone resources to that because you said no, that's not a person you should be listening to. People who do that is people who doesn't respect you, so why would you want to be associated with them, right?
So, if the plan doesn't plan, take a moment to analyze the situation and decide how much in on your plate and how much can you really afford to attend. And then cut the excess.
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