This probably never happens to you, but lately I’ve been feeling like my life is getting out of control. Seems like there’s just so much to do and a 24-hour day is simply not long enough. Thankfully I’ve got some friends who could see from the outside how far off track I was getting and they gently and firmly talked to me about getting myself back into alignment and focus.
For the last few days, I’ve been trying to get the overwhelm all sorted out and categorized and re-aligned with how I want to live my life. Let me try to convey for you why it’s become such a mess.
At work, my management established 21 corporate objectives for me. These are goals they specifically set for me, whether or not those goals aligned with anything I desired for myself or my place within the company. AND…they made those objectives a key part of our continuing employment and possible promotion. In other words, these objectives carry quite a bit of built-in pressure. AND, the management are always asking for updated status on each objective.
Also at work, the management decided one of the best things we could do is to develop ourselves personally in addition to our career development. So, they worked to establish personal goals with us and try to align them around our areas of interest. The only real problem with this whole scenario is they are now almost continually checking on our progress. And that puts some additional pressure to accomplish these goals at the expense of any new opportunities we might want to take advantage of.
PLUS…we are not allowed to change any of our corporate objectives or personal goals until next June.
Add to those, the goals I brought forward from my old 44Squared blog and some new ones I thought might be neat during my 45th Year and you can see for yourself, I have a TON of stuff on my plate. AND we haven’t even talked about the million and a half things I do with my family and friends that aren’t part of my goals and objectives.
In other words…too much to do and too little time and like most everyone else in that situation I started “putting out fires” and only taking care of the most urgent situations instead of the most important. Well, it’s time to stop that and get back to putting first things first and making sure the main thing is the main thing.
I plan to put hands and feet on this idea by:
- Firming up my bedtime for 10:30 PM…one of the things I’ve been giving up in order to get things done is sleep and this is starting to impact my health and wellness.
- Taking advantage of the Astrid web-based program and it’s associated Android app to create automated lists of recurring tasks, appointments and “next task” items on my work objective and personal goals lists.
- Firming up an actual schedule for weekday mornings to make the most of the time between when I wake up and when I have to leave for work.
- Firming up an actual schedule for weekend mornings to make the most of “alone time” between the time I get up and time everyone else gets up.
- Firming up plans at work for the objectives that can be placed into specific time slots.
- Reducing the number of things I’m trying to accomplish each month and week…taking some pressure off me.
Over the next day or two, I will be making a block schedule as a weekly template and will share that as well, in case you might find it helpful.
If you’ve dealt with similar situations in your past, I’d appreciate if you share how you handled it…so we can ALL benefit.
Tiny Bit Better 