scheduling drama

So, yesterday, I really did it to myself. Without fully realizing or understanding it, I had booked myself so solid on Thursday that I thought I was going to die - coffee with a colleague at 9:30, followed by a seminar at 1:30, which I had to leave 15 minutes early to participate in a focus group down the street at 3, and then a webinar at 5, followed by a television interview (for an upcoming documentary on Somerville Community Access Television) at 7. Needless to say, I ended up not making a couple of the events - notably the seminar and the webinar. But man, I was still stressed out.

One of the things I'm realizing slowly but surely is how precious my time is - I'm feeling very protective of it at the moment, to the point where I'm almost reluctant to set meetings at all. Which, of course, is not really reasonable - I have to meet with my clients, go to networking events, etc. - but I'm starting to feel a need become much more selective of the events I do attend, and I'm definitely monitoring the amount of volunteer work I engage in.

The things you learn along the way...

Is it possible to be TOO social?

So the last couple of weeks have been literally insane - I've been trying to get work done around the office, but I just keep having meetings - meeting with a client here, a potential client there, meetings with my acupuncturist (to deal with my stress and lack of focus), a woman I'm mentoring, and various networking events - it's been enough to drive me insane. It's almost like I'm compulsively leaving the house.

What's crazy about this level of social activity is that you get so caught up in being on autopilot that you forget that you have a choice. When I find myself getting frustrated because this or that one is "demanding" my time, I have to keep reminding myself that I chose to be this busy. I chose to schedule all these meetings back to back.

So now comes the ultimate challenge - time management. Today, I'm going to look at next week and the coming weeks and I'm going to start scheduling 2 days a week where I will allow myself to meet with people and/or swallow my day with meetings (preferably not SWALLOW the day, but at least I'll limit my meetings to being on those two days), and 2 days a week where I stay in and work exclusively on being productive for clients. The other day will be devoted exclusively to working on my business - admin/financial stuff, marketing, designing promo pieces and updating the website/blogging/all that stuff.

It's going to be an interesting experiment, but my hope is that I'll be able to finally whittle my schedule down to a balanced 5-day workweek, including meetings, etc. The somewhere to go almost every day thing has GOT to go.

And the Tuesday morning yoga class and Wednesday morning meeting with my support buddy has GOT to stay.