I imagine you go through times like this:\u00a0 I started working this morning, and was just overwhelmed by all the stuff that needs to be done today.\u00a0 There’s a bunch of actions I didn’t get to last week, a whole pile of reminders that I set for myself, and meetings from one end to the other.<\/p>\n
It happens.<\/p>\n
You know what?\u00a0 Almost all of this I did to myself.\u00a0 It’s not like people have forced<\/em> me into all these meetings, or set deadlines which were unrealistic.\u00a0 No, most of it was what I’ve chosen to accept.<\/p>\n I actually do appreciate the feeling of being busy – it makes me feel productive.\u00a0 But I also recognize that a bunch of it isn’t really adding value<\/em>, it’s activity that isn’t critical and absolutely necessary.<\/p>\n This really hits home when you do have a true emergency.\u00a0 If you have a death in the family, for instance, you start pushing things aside.\u00a0 With a few quick phone calls, you call on others for their help, make apologies for those meetings, and put a whole pile of stuff into the “I can’t worry about it now” bucket.<\/p>\n A shocking number of those things, I’ve noticed, never get addressed at all.\u00a0 By the time you get back to work, they’re no longer relevant, or someone else has addressed them.<\/p>\n You don’t want to treat everything as an emergency, of course.\u00a0 If someone calls you and asks, “Could you take care of this because I’ve had a death in the family?”, that’s much different than, “Could you take care of this because I’m too busy?”<\/p>\n This is really more of a mental exercise for prioritizing your tasks.<\/p>\n Recognize, also, that your busy-ness is largely because of what you choose to take on.\u00a0 So when you’re “crazy busy” and don’t have enough time, start with yourself first.\u00a0 Don’t blame it on your boss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"