Course Corrections

You may have gathered from my writings the past couple of weeks that I have been sick. Not only is it unusual for me to be sick, but I got sick on September 2 and yesterday was the first day since then that I woke up thinking about what I could do, rather than what I had to do. I have worked hard at staying focused on what was possible, not what I had on my list of to-dos. I was assessing each day by what I absolutely had to get done–and how I was going to do it.

Imposed Course Corrections

These externally imposed (read: I have no control over) course corrections caused me to move from want-to-do lists to I-can-do lists while I’ve been sick. Even though I didn’t have the energy to do more, it was really hard to keep my list realistic. Normally I start every day optimistically, with a belief that I’m going to get a huge amount done. As a result I usually do get lots done. But what I learned over the past 10 days is that it was better to make course corrections to what I could do than it would be to lay on the couch beating myself up (okay, there was a little of that) because I wasn’t getting enough done. In fact, I completed my very short list every day.

Needed Course Corrections

I find in my own life that it is the course corrections I know I should make, but that don’t fit into my grand plan that are the most difficult. I can rip out my knitting, but I forget to adjust my knitting plan to accommodate the extra knitting time needed. It only makes sense that things get out-of-whack and I’m eventually up against the wall with more work than I realistically have time to do.

So I am going to really try to be realistic, or at least more realistic. This will mean scaling back, changing deadlines, and making some choices. This will make me better, not a lessor, person–see, I am trying to convince myself!

Yesterday morning as I drove Mitch to the airport he suggested that I cut my to do list down to a third of what I wanted to do.  I kind of did that (and if you look at the Sunday list–that’s a third). Today’s list went a step further and I actually put times-to-do down for things.

New Course Corrections

I have committed to doing something else for parts of September and October (to be shared later). To keep that happening, and to keep my projects on track, I am going to relax my blog schedule between now and mid-October. I’ll still write my Tuesday blog, but Fridays may be something else. We’ll see what they end up being. Blogs will still go up on schedule at 5 pm on Tuesdays and Fridays. My newsletter will stay on it’s Thursday, 5 pm schedule.

I hope you read the interview I did with Karen Robinson that went up over the weekend. Click here if you didn’t.