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How do you keep your focus in focus?

Important distractions should be prioritiesIt’s been so long since I haven’t had a full schedule that I’m having a hard time finding time in my schedule! Ever had that problem?

For lots of years now I had very little available time. I had lots of little clusters of time and I could hunt down the open clusters and cram them full of tasks like nobody’s business. I used to set deadlines and beat the heck out of them. It was effortless. If I didn’t have time to do something, I’d simply decline until further notice. Now those clusters of time are much larger, each task has priority and nothing can be declined. As a result I’m having a hard time fitting everything in. (Can this be considered a “cluster f*ck”?) I want to do everything on my list right now, just in case I suddenly no longer have time!

For the most part, I’ve tried to maintain the same to-do list and schedule format that I used successfully in my work life, but setting tasks outside of a structured work environment can be frustrating.

For example… say I’ve got a deadline to update my website by the end of the week but something comes up. If it were someone else’s website, I’d do everything to avoid having to break deadline and delay the project. But since there’s nobody but myself waiting for the site to be updated, I can put it off a week, right?  No problem. The up side is: the only person I’m disappointing is myself. The down side is: I’m disappointed.

Experts say “prioritize and stick to it!” Wow, not easy with my current list. It’s not difficult in a structured environment where deadlines make a task’s priority pretty clear. But which of these things on my current list should take priority: teaching my 5-year-old stuff or contacting people about work? Implementing a website redesign so the dang thing represents what I can really do or designing a demo site to present to a potential employer? Nope… my to do list is not even as simple as a matter of apples and oranges. It is as varied as a grocery list!

Maybe the trick is going to be sorting the apples, oranges, celeries, spaghetti sauces, etc into groups, and then prioritizing within those groups. Maybe having those priorities straight will help cut down on feeling overwhelmed by things to do..? Well, I suppose it’s worth a shot, and I’ll be sure to record my findings for a future post. ;-) In the mean time, any other suggestions?

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Greener pastures or pastures greener?

I quit my regular gig the Monday before Christmas. While the timing could have been better, it also could have been a lot worse. After all, how often do you feel like you get enough time off around the holidays? ;-)

At any rate… WTF, you say? I said that too! After all, I’d been there for 5 ½ years, and for most of that time had really enjoyed my job. I liked the people I worked with. I also loved and believed in the organization and for the most part, I still do, so I’ve been pounding myself to explain.

Was it really the right thing to do? Well, if there is any single thing I do know, it was a good thing, and that alone makes it the right thing. On my last day, when I had everything squared away and all of my office cubicle crap loaded in the car (amazingly, just one box after all of these years) I felt a million pounds lighter. That night, I slept soundly for the first time in months! And I swear it had nothing to do with the tequila!

For those of you who know how much I enjoyed my job and believed in my work at the credit union, you might be wondering what prompted this (seemingly ridiculous) decision? Well, there were many things, mainly the sense that my professional progress was halting… but the fact is that everything added up to a stress level that simply became no longer manageable and had no other end in sight.

All of the nitty gritty will eventually be forgettable, but what is really important are the things that I learned. I’m not talking about the technical things, I’m talking about the things that will make life manageable even when the going gets rough. I ignored some of these things, so now that I’ve awoken to them, I have got to write them down! Here are four things that are absolutely critical:

Brynn and her snowbrynnKnow Yourself. This is absolutely the most important thing you could probably do for yourself inside or outside of work. Don’t lose sight of who you are and who you want to be. Sometimes those two pieces of you agree and sometimes they don’t. Self is an ever changing creature, so to know your self is to always be checking in with it and treating it like a stranger at every meeting. “Who are you and what do you want?”

To know yourself better, make a list of your strengths and weaknesses. Don’t be afraid of the weaknesses because they may really be strengths in disguise. (For instance, I have a tendency to avoid arguments… maybe this is somewhat cowardly, but it makes me a nice person way more often than it makes me a wimp, so is it really a weakness? I don’t think so, and that’s what makes me Me!) Figure out how you can use your strengths and weaknesses to your advantage in life.

And the most important part of knowing yourself is that you’ll be less likely to let anyone else tell you who you are or need to be. DON’T EVER let anyone do that! You won’t ever be truly happy trying to fulfill someone else’s vision of you and if you ever find yourself in the situation where you no longer control your future… fix it or leave it behind!

Watch out for yourself. Unplug from your work when you go home. Don’t think about it at all. And pace yourself… Take your breaks, take your lunches, and TAKE YOUR VACATION TIME for frick sake! It’s there to help you stay sane! It doesn’t matter if it seems like you’re too busy and its going to suck for other people or something will go to hell if you take a break. This is about you, and if you ignore your own sanity and health, that’s not going to be good for anyone in the long run. The (not so old) adage is true, although I never grocked it fully until now… “Don’t work hard, work smart!” Make sure that you’re not (and this adage might be old) “burning your candle at both ends.”

Be observant. If you’re like me and you’re task oriented to a near-obsessive level, you can get completely absorbed in what you’re doing and not notice important things that are happening until it’s too late. Get to know your co-workers… get to know how they think, how they work, what they respond to and how they respond. It’s not someone else’s job to know your team. If you know the people that you’re working with and for, you’ll be more likely to recognize where drama is going to happen before it starts. Be honest, but know when full disclosure is not needed. Sometimes the truth pisses people off and it’s good to know who those people are. You need to have some idea how the people you work with are going to respond to what you have to say and if they even need to know in the first place.

Don’t feed the animals. That was one I heard a long time ago, and still laugh ironically about it because I just can’t stop feeding the fricking animals! I know it’s a mistake, but I do it anyway. (Probably why I have lots of cats.) When you give someone something they want, even though they should be able to do it themselves or wait for it to be done in due time, they will have a tendency to continue to ask you for special help. Eventually, if you can’t give them that special help anymore, they will likely become pissed off and try to bite off your fingers or your head. Best way to avoid this pain is to not let it get started in the first place. If someone asks you for something special, no matter how cute and fuzzy they are, please really really really think about it before you agree to help them out. Is it in your job description? Is it going to take time away from you doing your priority tasks? Just because a task is a priority for someone else doesn’t mean that it’s got to be a priority for you. Sometimes giving “help” actually does more harm than good.

So even though I do miss working at the credit union, the positives of leaving have (so far) outweighed the negatives by quite a lot.

What now? To be honest, I really didn’t have any question about that, myself. I’ve been working my arse off for the last 7 years, sometimes two or more gigs at once. When my daughter was born, I went back to work before she was even out of the hospital because we just couldn’t afford to be without my income. I think I’ll spend as much time with her as I can! And now I have the time to take on freelance web projects while I’m looking for another steady gig. While there might not be a lot of in-house jobs right now, quite a bit of stand-alone jobs could line up with just a little effort, and I might really enjoy the variety.

So far, the grass on this side of the fence is pretty tasty… just hope that holds true with the rest of this new pasture! :-)

~M

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Elk weather

herd of dozing elk

We decided to go to the coast for a couple of days, and as fate would have it, the weather changed promptly from sunny and pleasant to rainy and nasty. The beach was so  windy and frigid that we spend only about 15 minutes out in the sand before we finally decided that hypothermia was setting in and left. That being said, there was none of the promised kite flying, shell gathering, or sand castle building, which resulted in bored and disappointed children. *sigh* Better luck next time, I guess… which I think is what I said last time. ;-) That’s the Oregon coast for ya.

On the way home, though, we did catch a break between Reedsport and Elkton. The rain stopped long enough for us to pull off and snap a few photos of a herd of dozing elk!