You are the master of your fate (and your outlook calendar)
Two weeks ago I was at a crossroads. I have always prided myself on a semblance of work life balance and feel like I am very effective during the workday. I cross things off my to do list, I don’t sit under a mountain of paperwork, I return phone calls (for those of you that are not employed by a foundation, I swear these things are revolutionary). But the last couple weeks were different. My email in box was overflowing (it seemed like every item in there needed about 3 hours of strategic thinking to make a decision), my normally clean office was covered in piles of papers, and I was eating sour cream and cheese chips out of the vending machine for lunch as I was driving to another meeting. The bags under my eyes were making my staff nervous and I think I looked like I was on the edge of a hide under my desk breakdown. So much for balance.
Luckily I have a great coach, who asks common sense questions that I get too busy to ask myself. Her question was “why did I let my schedule get so crazy?”. That gentle reminder that my schedule is not the boss of me was all I needed to get back on track. So here are the four things that have given me my sanity back and ensured that my hair does not all fall out:
1) I set aside an hour at the end of each day to clean out my emails and handle all the paper on my desk,
2) I set aside one and a half hour blocks every other day for uninterrupted strategic thinking,
3) I set aside time for lunch each day. I may decide to have a lunch meeting those days but I will always have time to eat, and
4) I am saying no to meetings that I would normally say yes to out of obligation or fear of missing something good.
What do you do to keep your schedule on track?
January 29th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
I can really relate to this. I’ve also noticed that my emails are particularly fast and furious snd require complex, strategic responses. One lesson that I have learned to manage my schedule is to pay attention to my full calendar when I agree to long or intense meetings or events. I look at the day or two before and the day or two after to make sure that I’m not creating a monster week for myself. As long as I have a reasonable mix of desk time, meetings, and action I can usually keep everything going.
February 1st, 2009 at 9:29 am
Kate,
I really like the idea of looking at the whole week. I create the worst weeks when I am going out of town for a few days and I don’t schedule time to get caught up on work when I get back. hinking about this beforehand is a great idea.
Trista