WORK IN PROGRESS
THE Personal Effectiveness E-zine Vol. VII, Issue 15, Mid August, 2003

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In this issue:
~~ Take stock - Time and your many activities

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Taking Stock - Time and your many activities

I do not usually allow Work in Progress to be "about Diana" even though I am its owner and sole writer. However, today I am using it to demonstrate a process that I use in trying to decide how much of what I should be doing.

Many of us today are doing more than we intended to. It seems that every week there are newspaper and magazine articles that tell us how busy we are, how hectic life has become, how important it is to prioritize and to "just say no" to some of the people who ask us to take on more and more.

The process can be insidious. It's difficult to claim to be too busy in the face of "It's only one meeting a month," or "It's just for the next few weeks," and yet all those once a month meetings can add up. Then again, many of those meetings blossom into added responsibilities that take on a life of their own. Before we know it we've agreed to do this task, take on this responsibility, and suddenly one meeting a month calls for several extra hours of work that we had never intended to undertake.

We may convince ourselves that it is appropriate to say 'yes' to just one more organization because we need to spread our wings, or we need to widen our circle of social contacts and activities because our support network is weak, or because we need to network in order to grow our business. All of these are good reasons. The trick, though, is to make sure that the various activities and responsibilities which we add to our schedules are actually delivering the benefits for which we had hoped when we first joined or agreed to them.

I see the autumn as a good time for this type of stock-taking. While the New Year might appear to be the best time, for many people the New Year follows a time of intense activity and financial excess that leaves us unable to think clearly. For others, in the northern hemisphere, judgment may be a little off due to Seasonal Affective Disorders (SADS), which is often at its peak in the weeks following the shortest hours of daylight. (As an aside, it occurs to me that this may be one advantage of living in the southern hemisphere - the hectic nature of the various holidays that occur in December and early January do not coincide with the days of least length of light. Thus pressure may not build on pressure in quite the same way.)

So, as the autumn-heralding month of September approaches it seems, for me, to be a good time to take stock of the many activities in which I invest my time.

Have you considered your use of time in terms of investment? You may invest time (and, of course, effort) in family well-being, your own serenity, income, social support, the betterment of the world... there are many pay-backs that we seek when we decide to contribute our time to an activity. Are you getting a good return on your investment?

Here's a rough and ready formula that I use when I'm trying to decide to expand or cut back on my activities and responsibilities. It involves answering five questions:

1. What are the positives of my present participation?
These may be material, in the sense of increased income or business. They may relate to well-being, as in exercise, hobbies or contacts with other people that we enjoy. They may reflect our desire to contribute to the betterment of the world, or of a particular piece of it, as in the case of our volunteering to one or another of the many volunteer organizations and causes.

2. Are the positives meeting the original expectations that led me to join in the first place?
Did you think you would find friendship and support? Increased business? Something else? After a few months or years of involvement, what is the real story? Are you finding what you hoped to find?

3. What are the negatives?
Do you frequently feel frustrated or irritated at the end of an event? Do you regularly dread attending? Are there problems that you feel unable to surmount? Do you feel unappreciated or unnoticed?

4. What is your contribution?
While this may be seen as coming under the 'positives' heading, I see it as slightly different. Positives and negatives can directly offset one another in an almost mathematical formula. My contribution, however - the extent to which I feel that my presence and activity do or do not make a difference - comes into a slightly different category. If I really feel that my contribution is making a major difference then I can handle a lot more negatives that if I believe it makes little difference whether I am there or not.

5. How much difference would it make in your life if you were not doing this activity? This may involve finding that you have more - or less - time, effort, responsibility, stress, whatever.

What I'm suggesting is that you run through this taking-stock routine with all of those activities about which you have a choice. Compare them. Are there those that are regularly stressing you out? Are there those that give you huge positives so that the stress is worth while? Are there those that are nothing at all like what you had expected?

Do some comparing and contrasting. Consider where you find winners and where you find losers. Clearly, for those of us (the majority) who have a budget to balance, income related activities may have to take priority. (Issues around stress at work come under a different category that may need to be addressed in a future WIP - in the meantime you might want to check out my "Top Ten Ways to Cope when You are Overwhelmed at Work" at the Top Ten page of my www.ChoiceCoach.com web site if this situation applies to you.)

If you have decided that you need to cut back on your commitments, then firm up your resolution and set your boundaries. Decide which activity gives you the least of what you need, based on the answers to the above questions - and any more that may occur to you given your own value system. Be prepared for there to be people who will act as though they are shocked and horrified if you say that you will no longer be involved in their organization. Do not be dissuaded. Keep your boundaries firm and do what you need to do for yourself. If you don't, who will?

If you are unwilling to burn any bridges, you can simply say that you need to step back for a while. However, you probably don't want to do that so gently and nicely that they feel free to call you every month asking when you'll be back. Make a "Don't call me, I'll call you" situation.

One of the things I have realized, as I stepped myself through this process, is that the amount of writing and editing I do that is unpaid is huge. I need to cut back. So, starting in September, Work in Progress will be a once-a-month newsletter instead of twice-a-month. I know from your e-mails that many of you find it useful and helpful, and I would not consider discontinuing it. However, I have been writing WIP twice a month, with only a couple of glitches, since September 1997. I also write my spirituality-oriented e-zine, Grounded in the Earth, Reaching for the Sky, once a month. I am a contributing editor at http://healingwordspress.com/inspiranote/. I am working on a book on which I am not making nearly enough progress. It seems that there are only so many words I can produce in a day. So, once a month it is for Work in Progress.

I am, of course, also reviewing all of the many other volunteer and Board activities in which I am involved. In this way, I hope that I can not only maintain and improve my own quality of life, but be a model of the balance and richness that I seek not only for myself, but for my coaching clients - people with whom I love working, and who deserve the very best that I can give them.

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TELL A FRIEND

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Copyright 2003 Diana Robinson, PhD., PCC. Work in
Progress may be reproduced in its entirety only,
including this copyright line. Disclaimer -The contents herein are solely the opinions of Work in Progress owner, and should not be considered as a form of therapy nor advice. There is no guarantee of validity or accuracy. If expert assistance or counseling is needed, services of a competent professional should be sought.