A little life management
There will always be more to do in a day than I can fit in. For me, life management is all about setting and sticking to my priorities.
One aspect of adult life that I’ve struggled with is managing priorities. I’ve always had a bit of duality about my personality- I throw myself whole heartedly into what I do but there’s always something new pulling my attention away.
As a kid/young adult, it meant that I was the high school student that took want to learn odd things. As a college student, it meant I had more minors than I knew what to do with and couldn’t make up my mind about my major.
Now, as an adult I am balancing the needs/wants of my son, my husband, my extended family, my friends, various social obligations……oh, and I have a goal or two.
It’s not that any of those people or groups are in my life reluctantly.These are people and groups that I care about, that I’m invested in. But good lord. There’s only so much of me to go around.
Now, the one lesson that I have learned as an adult is that if I am clear about expressing what I just can’t do the people in my life are pretty good about adjusting- although there may be some grumbling. Those unreasonable demands are my creation, based on this idea that there are so many things that I need to do.
Let’s be totally honest for a minute. In reality, I need to perform basic functions to keep myself alive (the whole eating and sleeping, etc). I need to provide my son with what he needs to grow up safely and with the necessary life skills to function. Everything else is a choice- how I fulfill those basic needs, the other things I choose to do with my time and energy. These needs and “wants” are something that I’ve created. Which means that is up to me how busy I am, how tired I am, how spread thin I am.
Now, I’m not saying that these choices are easy. Far from it. But acknowledging that I’m tired and spread thin because of my own choices means that I have the ability to say no, to change those choices.
Sometimes, we need to take a moment and reexamine those choices. Make sure we’re spending our time in accordance to our priorities. And that we’ve put some thought into those priorities.
I so agree!! After working-full time and trying to keep up with the kids while my hubby is deployed there is only so much energy and time left in each day! Despite me being a very productive person there is still way more for me to get done that the amount of time I’ve had to try to tackle it all! Plus it doesn’t help when your getting ready to PCS (hello wild house) and then find out it’s been diverted for 6 months AND right before hubby is getting back from deployment, sigh! Guess it’s time I choose (ie make myself) to get off the computer NOW and go be productive ;p
So true. I was told by numerous people that I’d have to give up blogging when I went back to work full time. Yes, I could give up, but when we are passionate or called to something I think it’s best to figure out “ok, how can I manage my time effectively?” I’m still working on my own schedule, and I don’t always stick to it as is like, but I try.
Now what to do when I start working toward my other goals??
I think this is something everyone can stand to think about and learn from. Goodness knows I need to!
Learning to prioritize is something we all have to get to at some point. I found in the past that I would spread myself too thin, volunteer too much in too many places, and then things suffered…I suffered. Lesson learned!
well, not gonna lie, its nice to know that I’m not the only one that has this problem now and again. I have to realize that it is my choice to do all this stuff…and its more about learning to say no and let things pass my plate instead of trying to heap it all on. I know I have the hardest time saying no whenever I feel like I”m not getting enough “me” time, then I start heaping it on….sigh