Friday, May 7, 2010

Help Wanted-aka Zeke’s Goals Revisited

After my fairly bold post last week, I’ve been reflecting quite a bit on this job problem and how I’m dealing with it. So we’re clear, it’s not like I just threatened to quit. The truth is, opportunity-wise at least, I have a fairly sweet arrangement with my existing job. But will getting additional help really help? Yes and no. Sometimes in life, if you can solve one problem, others can become a lot more manageable.

So, now that I’ve completed Goal #1, I think I need to add another goal to the list to be the new number one for this year, and it’s a goal I believe I may achieve more easily if I take advantage of social commitment (hence this post):

Goal #1. Master the art of managing my time so that work time is work time, and play time is play time.

It’s not that I totally suck at time management, and I’ve certainly made various efforts over the years, but planning one’s time is a lot like exercising. You always feel better when you do it well (often the benefits to overall health-both mental and physical-are tremendous), but doing it (at least initially) kind of sucks. And keeping at it...isn’t always that easy.

Not that I want my whole life planned out. Far from it. But when it comes to certain aspects of my life…aka work…I think I would be a lot happier if I planned my time better.

I think a big challenge I’ve had is that I’ve been too much of a perfectionist with this issue, and when I fail, I get discouraged and more or less give up for a while. It's also true that my job is challenging in that it demands planning, but I also have to be ready to respond in an emergency, which I guess is all the more reason to plan when I can. I don’t need to always accomplish what I had in mind…I just need to plan well enough so that the person driving my life is ME. So that I’m in the habit of saying yes to the things that really matter (friends, family, well deserved recreation…you know…the good stuff in life)… and NO to the things that don’t.

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