Day by Day: Tiffany's Day 3

Evaluating my commitments was easy; I didn't put anything important about "work" so I should just quit that, right? Ha! Seriously, though, a lot of my commitments and daily energies are spent on work, including extra curricular and voluntary positions. So, to commemorate this project, I said no to one of my old commitments and dropped my presence on an after-school committee. To complicate matters, the person in charge of the group confronted me directly and asked me to stay--especially because she's having trouble finding members. At first, that made me feel guilty and I nearly caved. Then it occurred to me: all of those other people said "no" and held firm, so why should I be the one to bend? My time is just as important as theirs. And there it was.

So now, on Day 3, how can I use that momentum to keep going? What can I do to build each goal into every day?

1. Cherishing my relationship with my partner

I'm going to start and end every day letting my spouse know how much I appreciate him, and spending time enjoying his company.

2. Being a good mother to my son(s)

Unless I have a prior commitment, I will be home within 15 minutes of my kiddo. Once I'm there, it's easy to love on him, play with him, and teach him the things he needs for a good life. And as for the little roo currently hopping around my belly? I'm working on de-stress techniques that can be done throughout the day to help give him a more hospitable hopping environment. Yoga poses, deep breathing exercises, positive framing, etc.

3. Improving my health (physical, mental, and emotional)

This one got thrown in my face yesterday (hence my lack of post). After working hard to start losing weight and taking care of my body, the last few months I've slid back into old habits. Unsurprisingly, I've been diagnosed with gestational diabetes for the second time. This *forces* me to spend more time making good meals, tending to my health, and exercising. It's really a blessing in disguise, though it's a giant pain in the ass kind of blessing.

4. Improving my finances

The goal is to spend more time at home, including time for meal prep. and family time. These things naturally improve our finances. As for other things I can do to address item 4? How about home improvement projects, working on my doctorate, and continuing to honor all those dreaded school commitments that contribute to a steady paycheck?

Mitch: Day 2 - On Commitments

Day 2: Evaluate your commitments. Look at everything you've got going on in your life. Everything, from work to home to civic to kids' activities to hobbies to side businesses to other projects. Think about which of these really gives you value, which ones you love doing. Which of these are in line with the 4-5 most important things you listed above? Drop those that aren't in line with those things.

We all spent yesterday listing out what we would spend our time and energy focusing in an ideal world. So Day 2 should be a piece of cake, right? Actually, for most of us I imagine it's a struggle. Because the reality is that we find ourselves so inundated with obligations because we truly find them all to be important. We wouldn't accept them in the first place if we didn't think they were for one reason or another.

For example, a few months back I found myself in an impossible situation at work. We were in the middle of a massive project, and our team was just beginning to ride up against crunch time. At the time we knew that we only had 30 days to complete a mountain of work and none of us believed that we stood a chance at actually accomplishing it. Most of us were so overloaded with competing priorities that we were finding it difficult to make any headway on any work at all. Our management staff had begun bringing on outside contractors to help us with the work, which was a huge relief.

For myself, I found that I had four major tasks to accomplish:

Task 1 - Always urgent, sometimes important and always unpredictable

Task 2 - Always urgent but less urgent than Task 1, always important

Task 3 - Somewhat urgent, but very important

Task 4 - Not urgent, very important

Since the start of this project Task 4 had been an area I was excited to work on. Unfortunately, as it was easily the lowest priority item, I could never find time to work on it.

In the midst of all this, the company I work for required us to use up the rest of our vacation time from the previous year, despite it being an incredibly busy season, and so I took off for two weeks to adopt a couple kittens and visit my dear friends in Chicago. At the end of it all I was relaxed, focused, and ready to get back and use my new found energy to burn through Tasks 1-3 in order to finally get some time in on my pet project.

Sadly, this was not to be the case.

Now, I love my co-workers. We truly are a team and they're many of the most wonderful people I've ever had the chance to work with. They're the kind of people that look out for each other and help out whenever they can. So during my vacation, knowing how burdened I'd been, they brought in a new contractor who just so happened to specialize in my pet project. This was intentional. They knew that I hadn't been able to get to it and didn't want me to have to worry about it anymore. What they didn't know was how important it was to me. So the reaction I had was certainly not one that they expected.

For one, I felt betrayed for having something that was so important to me taken away by the people I trusted and cared for most. On top of that I was jealous because some new guy just waltzes in and gets gifted with the time to work on the one thing I had been trying for MONTHS to get to, and it seemed cruelly unfair. And finally I felt guilty. Guilty because I had been assigned this project and here they were bringing in this guy to take it over because I couldn't do my damn job well enough to make any progress on it. But really it had nothing to do with any of that.

My friends were making the best decision they could without me there to consult, and genuinely tried to do the right thing on my behalf so I can't fault them. Our contractor was simply paid to do a job and my project happened to be the job he was brought on to do. And honestly, I was overworked, I couldn't get to Task 4 because I had too much on my plate, not because I couldn't hack it.

The reality is that I didn't get to work on that project because I actively chose not to make what mattered most to me a priority in the first place. That simple choice not to be true to my values got me all twisted up inside. I needed a reason to not have to accept the fact that I made the decision to lose that project. So I made up a number of them to preserve my place as the tragic antihero of my own life. I used those false reasons to turn against my friends, against our contractor and against myself so that I could play the martyr and somehow justify my loss through it.

But that still doesn't answer the question of why I didn't just focus on that project in the first place. What was stopping me? It isn't like I put off the task because of some deep seated desire to create misery for myself and people I care about. I put it off because I saw why the other tasks were more important to the organization than the one I cared about. And because I value having a job, I've made a commitment to my organization to value their commitments and take them on as my own. In this case, what the organization wanted and what I wanted were at odds, and the choice I made was to put the organization first because it seemed like the right thing to do.

This happens any time we make a commitment to an organization, a person or even an idea. We marry ourselves to their values. In our ideal world, we find ourselves married to others whose values are in line with our own. In that scenario we can focus on the things that matter most to us within a support system that encourages and provides for us in a way far greater than we could possibly do for ourselves. Too often, though, the reality is that we marry ourselves to jobs, friends, lovers, and belief systems that put us at odds with the things most important to us. Before long we find ourselves forced to start making choices between what we want and the desires of those we've committed ourselves to. In general we make the rational decision that the benefits we gain from having any kind of support network is worth more than the small piece of ourselves that we just gave up.

But, over time, we take on more and more of their "important" commitments until we find that we've no time left for ourselves. We're in a quagmire, feeling betrayed at the lack of support of the people, organizations and belief systems most central to our lives, jealous of the people living the lives we wish we could lead, and guiltily perceiving ourselves as selfish, lazy, or simply not capable enough to do the things we wish we could be doing.

So when we're forced to make the difficult choice of what commitments to keep, and which to let go, don't get hung up on the idea of importance. In fact, for every commitment that you see as being important, take a deep breath, clear your mind, step back and ask yourself who it's important to and why. If you can't answer this by saying that it's important to YOU because it supports YOUR values, then cut it from the list.

As difficult as it may be to cut some of these things from your life, remember that you're making a covenant with yourself today to believe in, support, and focus on the things you love, the things that you're most passionate about. Sometimes this can be a lonely experience if it means saying goodbye to places, people and things that have become comfortable to you despite the conflicts they create in your life. But a strange thing happens that's not unlike buying a new car or, for us gamers, not unlike rolling a new character you think looks cool and unique in some online game. It never fails that as soon as you get out on the road you see people all over the place driving your same make, model, and color of car. And in the game suddenly every other player you come across seems to have the same race, class, and hairstyle as your character. And it's all because our minds are trained to look for things that resonate with the things we value.

When you put the desires of others above your own, you're of course going to find all kinds of people who are more than willing to burden you with the things that are important to them and you're probably going to take them on. But when you live the life you want to live and put the things that matter most to you first, you'll find yourself more and more surrounded by people and situations that mirror your values and that will support you on the journey that you've chosen to take.

For my personal journey on this item, over the years I've largely been able to cull the things I do down to be fairly in line with my values. But that doesn't mean my life doesn't need some re-prioritization! The recent discovery for me that much of my exhaustion is very likely caused from over stimulation means that I need to very seriously commit to making sure I get honest, quiet time for reflection. So even though I spend my time focusing on the things I care about, I err in trying and cram in as many of those things as possible in far too short of a time span. As a result I simply get overwhelmed and don't enjoy ANY of it because I stress myself out from wanting to do it ALL and over stimulating myself even more. So you'll see this as the big theme of my culling exercise.

Work:

Team Leader & Intra/Inter-Departmental Liason - While not my actual title or position, I often fill this role by running meetings and coordinating work assignments. I tremendously enjoy it because I feel like I'm helping people understand topics and focus their work on the projects that matter to them. Could definitely benefit from being more focused in meetings by giving myself more time for quiet reflection.

Problem Solver - Figuring out creative ways to solve issues ties into my desire to learn and grow in knowledge and wisdom, which lets me discover new and better approaches to situations. More than anything this could benefit from quiet reflection and the focus gained from that.

Social:

Son - I meet my mom for lunch weekly because having a good relationship with her is really important to me, but could definitely center myself more and be more present during it.

Friend - As I mentioned yesterday, I meet with friends pretty regularly, and I've really put a strong emphasis on building and maintaining relationships with the friendships with those who complement my values and challenge me to develop better understandings of them. Tragically I'm usually so caught up in a whirlwind of stimulus from the day that I'm probably, at most, only ever about 10% present. Quiet reflection wins here too.

Civic:

Good Citizen - Another thing I'm passionate about is helping total strangers. I have a strong belief that our society lacks so much trust in strangers because the most exposure we get to actually interacting with them comes from slasher flicks and urban legends. So whenever I can I try to just do something nice for people I don't even know in the hopes that they'll be willing to do the same for someone else. The biggest thing that gets in the way is mental exhaustion, which I'm hoping I can resolve through effective quiet time.

Hobbies:

Video Games/Playing Music/Discovering and Listening to Live & Recorded Music/

Reading/Watching Television Shows & Movies/Writing - As much as I would prefer to focus on productive time with these hobbies, usually I'm so exhausted that they become escapes. For example, I find myself putting way too many hours into playing an MMO called Rift because it's totally mindless for me, and should be relaxing, but isn't. I throw music on while I'm playing, bombarding myself with stuff I love, but overstimulating myself past the point of enjoying it. Then I finally settle down to read and end up just glossing over the pages, taking in only a small portion of the content, because my brain is in overload. Again, without putting energy into the number 1 most important value on my list, the other things begin to fall apart.

Home:

Kittens/Laundry/Food/Plants/Cleaning/Sleep - All of these, the latter most ironically, get sacrificed as well from wanting nothing more to just relax, which is attempted through hobbies, which fails because I'm not doing what's most important for me to do. And everything else suffers for it in the end.

That's it for today! Thanks again, everyone, for making the time to check in.

- Mitch

Commit Me

So today's prompt is to evaluate your commitments and chuck what isn't in line with those core values you came up with on the first day. I'm guessing this one operates under the contemporary assumption that everyone puts too much into their day, into their kids' days, etc etc and we have no face-to-face time anymore. And, yeah, for some people that's true. In my case not so much.

Remember that whole "procrastination is a way of life" thing I said yesterday? Well, after reading today's task it became glaringly obvious that this statement is a bold fact.

I don't have any commitments to chuck in order to pave the way for those things important in my life. I don't really have many commitments at all, really. And any I do have are directly tied to my list.

Play groups so the boy gets to interact with peers.
Swim class so the children don't drown in the neighbors literal inground cesspool.
Meetings with various therapists so the boy can get into EI Preschool classes.
Doctor appointments of various kinds because everyone needs to be healthy.
Weekly dinners/activities with the inlaws to keep in touch with them.
Tri-weekly/monthly phone calls to my parents to keep in touch with them.
Attempted weekly/biweekly activities with friends for the same reason.
Daily email exchanges with my best friend to keep in touch with her.
Occasional business related meetings or deadlines.

It sounds like a lot but it isn't really. Not on a day-to-day basis.

Perhaps I have failure to launch syndrome?

I mean, there are other commitments - little, but imperitive things, that need to be done for the house to function. Laundry, cleaning, dishes, cooking, gardening, etc. But I don't carry them out very efficiently.

I definitely have a 'failure to commit' problem. Not relationship-wise, I think that is probably one area of my life, along with parenting, that I put the most effort into on a daily basis. But all of the other areas fall by the wayside.

Personal health, aside from scheduling and attending doctor visits, is at the outer edge of my radar. I need to actually schedule time for that.

Happiness, well that is in among those other things but I really should schedule some specific time for that too.

And marriage? We have only had one date since the birth of my son three years ago that did not fall on our anniversary. One. It was amazing, that one non-anniversary date. Rejuvenating in so many ways. It was also the first time I've allowed myself to relax and have a beer (or four) since getting pregnant four years ago. We need more of that. Definitely need to take up one of the many friends who have offered on watching the kids for us so we can do it again.

I guess today's thought has taught me that rather than pairing down my commitments..I need to get committed in the first place.

Christa, Day 2: Evaluating My Commitments

Today's item is a toughie for me, since I have a tendency to overbook and then work through a mountain of to-dos until I finally feel comfortable again, at which time I take that opportunity to overbook all over again. Work, personal projects, and projects around the house all count, which is why I do things like start applying flooring at 10 p.m. and freelance work in the office (shhhh.) and spend my lunch hours crossing items off my weekly agenda, just to pare things down. So when you ask me to do something like today's item, I don't even know where to begin.

Evaluate your commitments. Look at everything you’ve got going on in your life. Everything, from work to home to civic to kids’ activities to hobbies to side businesses to other projects. Think about which of these really gives you value, which ones you love doing. Which of these are in line with the 4-5 most important things you listed above? Drop those that aren’t in line with those things.

Someone in my life said just the other day that I like being busy, which is true and untrue at the same time. Too much on my plate stresses me out - I'm not one of those go-go-go types who thrives on the chaos of having too much to do. Tedd has said more than once that I invent work for myself, which is true, but the work I invent for myself is really just all the things I'd be doing if I didn't have to work for a living. I like avocations, not vocations. One of the happiest times in my life saw me living in Costa Rica with only the bare minimum of paid work. And while I did create a certain amount of structure for my day, to-do items including swimming twice a day, going to the beach, tidying up my little condo, reading, and composing long emails to family and friends.

Admittedly I do love the feeling of accomplishment, which is part of the nuttery that prompts me to add personal to-dos on top of professional to-dos. I am absolutely caught up in the loop of wanting to "have it all," a myth if there ever was one. 

I want to succeed professionally - since I have to work for a living, I may as well kick butt at it. I want to do all the things that my SAHM friends do, too, like trips to the beach and the zoo and making things and educating my child and so on. I want to exercise, every day, because I love exercise, and I want to veg and watch TV, too. I want to maintain blog upon blog and keep an active online profile and officially open my own business. I want to socialize with others, but spend time with my family. I want to figure out a way to stay home with the P. and have another baby on top of it all.

Ha, right? Like what else can I cram in there!

Which brings me back to yesterday's list: spend quality time with family, doing more of what makes me happy, making some money, enjoying life's pleasures, and finding a place of contentment. Of all my obligations and hobbies and other activities, the main ones that contribute to the list would probably be:

• Caring for my family, because if they're not healthy and happy, I stand a better chance of spending quality time with them.
• Things like mommy's wine night, making stuff (when I feel like it) and crafting, reading, drawing (which I hardly do anymore), and walking
• Working, which I hate to put on the list but I'm saving up, building a base to make the "second baby" thing realistically feasible and so work has to be one of the items
• But also getting away from work at least once each day and probably more so I can enjoy life instead of feel like I'm slogging through it

Those are the biggies and honestly, with everything I do, it's not like I've had a lot of time to take on extraneous projects.

But in the interest of really challenging myself with Day 2's item, my plan is to 1. clean up my sewing/crafting area, which currently looks like I'm in the middle of a project when I'm not. A state that gives me anxiety because it makes me feel like I have some unfulfilled to-do items hanging over my head. Hobbies should not feel like another responsibility hanging over my head. 2. Ditto for personal projects that have failed to progress. Those need to go on the back burner instead of sitting on my to-do list like shining beacon of failure. 3. Evaluate certain professional commitments that are currently on hold - I need to ask myself if money-wise/time-wise/involvement-wise those are worth continuing or whether it's time to say ciao.

The hope is that by divesting myself of certain commitments both internal and external, I'll have more time to focus on the commitments that are actually important to putting yesterday's five things at the top of my mental list every day. Wish me luck!

P.S. - Did you know there's a Google calendar for the 72 Ideas in 72 Days project, thanks to Julia? I'm pretty sure you can sync it to your gmail - though I haven't been able to figure out how yet.

P.P.S. - The Attorney At Large posted her Day 2 here, so go have a read!