I Have A Little List...

Actually, it's rather a loooong list. All the things I'm working on, would like to work on, need to do (like washing the kitchen floor...), The Book I'm cowriting, and the other one I'm thinking about... the training course I want to go on. I used to keep it in my head, this list, and it flew about like bats in a belfry, dotting in and out of view, and periodically going to sleep entirely. Either way, I wasn't getting much done. Actually, that's not true. I was getting plenty done, just not what I truly wanted to work on.

Now, this is perplexing, but simply explained. In a previous life, I specialised in working with people on self development themes. One of the things I did with them, was help them to manage their time, their resources, so that they did what they wanted to do, rather than what emerged at the top of the pile. And then I burned out. Magnificently. It has taken eight years to get back on what appears to be a totally different track...but is also quite similar. Not to mention the detours along the way. In part, I blamed all the techniques I used, then, to manage my time, to fit more in, to do more... and I abandoned them.

Today, though, I thought, well, one little technique won't hurt. And I opened a little book that my friend Helen gave me, and I wrote A Little List. Six things To Do. And I did 'em. Even the kitchen floor! I think that sometimes, we are afraid of what we most need in our lives, and we contrive to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Today, I feel as if I've taken back a little more control over my life and my work. Really, what I've learned is that it's not the techniques you use, it's how you apply them. I used these useful time and self management techniques to work myself into a grease spot. Now, you can use them that way, but that's not the only way they apply. Using them with kindness and concern for the person I am... that seems to me to be the best way of working.

Excuse me, folks, I'm off to change my life.