Where do I start?

As I walked past the receptionist today she said to me, "Tanya, I've got so much to do I don't know where to start.  Where should I begin?"

"At the beginning, " I replied.

"But what happens when you don't know where that is?"

I gave her my honest answer: "Start anywhere you like then."

She looked at me for a while, a furrow in her brow.

Then she said: "Is that what you do?"

"Pretty much."

"Gee that's comforting coming from our project manager!"

I played it straight back.  "I'm glad because it's actually what you need to do sometimes when everything needs to be done 'now'."

"Oh!  You're serious!"

It was an interesting exchange.  There are times when everything needs to be done now and it can be overwhelming finding where and how to begin.  I've been in this situation before and I know that a lot of time and energy can be lost if I allow myself to become flustered or to panic.  While you're busy managing your emotions time could be spent on being productive.

I shared my personal three step philosophy with the receptionist:

1. Start where you are
2. Use what you have
3. Do what you can.

It works every time and is very handy in those moments of being overwhelmed.  You can just literally "start".  Forward momentum is very powerful and can give you the energy to keep going.

The project that I'm working on for this client is in the mucky and hard slog stage.  There are a lot of things and a lot of people and many tasks all demanding my attention.  I'm working on this project for only 16 hours per week, so in these early stages I can not afford to spend even half an hour being unproductive.  I'm getting things done, but my list is not getting shorter.  It can be easy to lose perspective and feel like you're not getting anywhere.

The CEOs received my various reports and congratulated me on the amazing progress I have made and continue to make.

WOW! It felt really great to receive this validation and perspective from people sitting on the outside!

Just getting on with it is serving me well.

What's your strategy when you have a lot to do and it's all urgent?

Return of Flaky Girl - or why ignoring my diary can only lead to disaster.

Last weekend I lost all concept of time.  I'd had a busy week where, unusually, I had barely looked at my diary.  With four days of facilitating it was easy to keep the details in my head.  Because I wasn't checking my diary regularly, I lost sight of what was coming.  I double-booked myself to such a level that I was living in two parallel worlds.

In one world, I knew that I had choir practice on Saturday morning.  When a friend suggested we visit the antiquarian book sale being staged as part of Rare Book week, I said yes and even planned lunch.  In my head, I was seeing Barry Humphries' show, Eat, Pray Laugh on Saturday night.  I'd booked the tickets back in March.  I could vividly recall the Perth hotel room I was in when I booked them, but had no idea what theatre I was to attend or what time the show was.

On Friday evening at the end of my choir's gig at the Gertrude Street Projection Festival, I had bid my fellow singers farewell with a "goodnight and see you in the morning".

At about 11pm on Friday night I decided to be prepared and print the show tickets in readiness for Saturday evening.  As I checked the details I discovered that I was going to the 1pm matinee!  That was the end of choir practice and the antiquarian book sale.

I contacted everyone to explain and apologised for being in a particularly flaky period.  Everyone was fine, but I felt stupid.

One reply from a member of the choir urged me to "get it together" with their tongue firmly in their cheek.

I used to have it together.  There was a time when I was the world's most organised and reliable person.  Flakiness just wasn't a mood in a my emotional lexicon.  I'd been to boarding school and lived on campus at university, I knew how to juggle a million things and never drop a ball.  As I grew up, I realised that this was behaviour I had learned.  It was necessary to adapt to the world I was living in, but it wasn't really me.  As I grow older, rather than getting it together, I'm unravelling.


When I suggest this to people they look at me in disbelief.  They raise their eyebrows and purse their lips.  They think I'm making it up.  I'm the queen of faking it until I make it and can easily create the illusion of complete organisation.  When the flaky girl rears her head, she lacks credibility. 


Yet, in many things, I am completely disciplined.  Now that I work from home (when I'm not facilitating or acting) I astound myself at my ability to stay focussed and get things done.  Previously when I've been at home studying or working from home to avoid distraction I've found any number of things to steal my attention.  Suddenly the prospect of cleaning the bathroom holds me in thrall!


On reflection, I've decided to embrace both sides of myself: it's a gift to be able to work both ways.  When I'm in business mode, I'm on time and exactly where I'm meant to be.  If I'm in creative mode (or if I'm tired and overwhelmed) time means nothing and I'll happily follow rabbits down holes until something distracts me.  Usually a basic need like food or warmth.  Both modes are valuable.

The other thing I am reminded of is why I value my diary.  Everything is in there.  All the details of where, when, who and what.  I just need to remember to read it.

What are your contradictions?  What's your worst case of double-booking?
******
Barry's show was excellent.  You can read my post about it here.
The Gertrude Street Projection Festival is still on and was one of my favourite things last week.
I had dinner with my antiquarian book friend on Sunday night instead - at Fidama in Yarraville.
I'm now catching up on learning new music I missed at rehearsal.

Photo a day June - TIME

TIME
(c) divacultura

All my trains, trams, appointments and such-like ran on time today.
Like clockwork, in fact.
Good, slick, Swiss clockwork. 
Tip top clockwork
Tick-tock clockwork.
Not dodgy, knock-off-Bali clockwork.
Running like that kind of clockwork would be bad.
Tock-tick.
Topsy-turvy.

The myki readers at South Yarra station are running on the second kind of clockwork.

Mixed up and lost

Today I tweeted:  Feel like it's Friday. But it's not. Friday.

Do you ever have that feeling?  When you're not quite sure what day it is or what's coming next?  

Today is actually Wednesday, so I was travelling forward in time by a couple of days.  

It's almost Thursday.  Not quite.  Almost. 

Thursday is not Friday.  Wednesday is not Friday.  Today, Wednesday wasn't even Wednesday.

I wonder what day it will be tomorrow?  What will Thursday masquerade as?  

I'd be content with Thursday to be Thursday.  I'm not working on Thursday this week.  Whenever it occurs.

I would be less happy for Thursday to be Friday this week, as I am working.  

Given today felt like Friday, I've thought about whether yesterday felt like Thursday, or just an ordinary Tuesday.  

I don't think yesterday felt like anything other than a day.  So perhaps it was just being Tuesday.

Thank goodness I didn't do anything rash.  My Fridays are often full of rash, end of week behaviour.  If I had fully embraced my feeling that today was Friday, there is no telling where the week would have ended.

Well there is.  It would have ended on Friday.  Just like every other week.  Except this time, Friday would be brought to us by Wednesday and we'd all say goodbye to hump day.

It's an elegant solution really.  Just cut out the middle man and be done with it.

With Masterchef and The Block on television every night of the week, I'm lacking differentiation.  Is it any wonder I'm suffering from a serious case of mid week madness.  

Or maybe that's end of week madness.

I just don't know anymore.

Is there a name for this?

When you get your dyas all mixed up.

Goodnight.

Good morning.

Good gracious...

...me.

It's never simple

This weekend I'm on a deadline.  I have a list of five things that must be completed by Monday (tomorrow).  They are all high stakes and are time consuming.  They require me to have access to my computer and printer.  I'm calm about this deadline.  I have a plan and I'm pretty good at focussing and working when I need to.  I cancelled my plans for last night as part of my prioritisation of these things.

The piece that I couldn't plan for was my printer dying.  I knew there was a possibility that I might need more toner, but with an Officeworks store five minutes away, this wasn't a big deal.

At about 5pm yesterday, the toner light started to flash.  I recognised this warning, but was on a roll and didn't need the printer at that exact moment - I could print later.  Then a warning came up on my computer screen telling me that I needed to clean my corona wire.  What an enticing prospect.  I'd never been propositioned in quite this way before, so I dived in and tried to follow the cryptic pictographs showing me how a stick figure would approach the task if they carried a gigantic magnifying glass.  I squinted, I leaned, I tugged, I jiggled and nothing seemed to work.  I stuck my tongue out and put on my "doing" face, but not even that worked.  I went to the solutions web site and discovered what I needed to do:  I needed to pull and slide.  I located the tiny green dooverlacky attached to my corona wire and I slid backwards and forwards for all I was worth.  I replaced the component, proudly, and pressed print.  The printer made some promising, printer-like sounds and then went deathly silent.  All that was left was the sullen blinking of the warning light.  Again.  Still.

I turned back to the solutions website and was relieved to discover they had a plan for this exact situation.  I clicked the link and received the bad news.  My drum needed replacing.  This had never happened before.  By this time it was about 6:15pm.  I went to the Officeworks website to check they had these drums and to see how much they cost.  They had none and they cost more than most complete printers.  I'd been thinking of upgrading to a wireless printer with a scanner, so this was obviously the time to do it.  I checked the store opening hours and discovered they were closed and I would have to wait until 9am this morning (Sunday).

I was there by 10am and found a 15 year old boy to help me decide.  Within five minutes, I'd made my decision.  I'd found everything I wanted for only $50 more than the cost of the drum for my old printer.

"I want that one," I said and pointed.  The 15 year old boy went "out the back" to get the stock.  He returned ten minutes later, empty-handed.

The store I was in was the only store in Melbourne without that particular printer in stock.  Time was ticking on and this quick trip to Officeworks was starting to take a chunk out of my day.  I asked the 15 year old to help me choose another one, but the only other options either didn't have all the elements I wanted or they were significantly more expensive.  I would have to drive over to another store.  The 15 year old helpfully called ahead to the other store to make sure they had the printer ready for me when I arrived.

In the other store, there seemed to be only one staff member and they were on the printing and copying desk.  I queued.  Soon I was explaining my story to another 15 year old.  She asked me if I'd talked to someone in "tech".  I gestured to the ghost town behind me, raised my eyebrows and shrugged.  She made a call and spoke to an invisible person.  After another fifteen minutes a small man with a huge trolley and a large cardboard box appeared.  He had my printer.  We queued at the checkout, but their pin pads were broken so I could only pay there if I was paying cash.  I wasn't.  We trekked back to the printing and copying desk.  I paid and the small man with the huge trolley took the cardboard box to my car.

I arrived back home with my new hardware almost two hours after I had left.  I opened the box, sorted all the components and separated the packaging.  It's plugged in, I've "unlocked" the toner, I've put the paper in and I've told it what country and time zone I'm in.  I'm ready, but the software installation process seems to have stalled.  It's still stuck on the same screen it was on when I started writing this post.

Perhaps I'll have to kidnap the 15 year old.

And what about getting rid of the old printer?  I hate to put things like this in the rubbish and know that it ends up in landfill, but what can you do?  Anyone? And then there's all the packaging from the new one too.

A big box of new rubbish.  (c) divacultura 2012

Time sprints on.

I turned the calendar over from January to February today.  It seemed too soon to do it yesterday.  I couldn't believe that one month of the year was gone already.  Every year, it's the same thing - how time flies.

Why does it feel like this, I wonder, given the actual pace of time according to our manufactured systems for measuring and counting time is fixed?  It is true that we refer to the days in winter as being "shorter" than summer days.  What we really mean is that the period of daylight is shorter because of our orbit around the sun.  A day is still a full 24 hours long and these hours are still comprised of 60 minutes, with each minute being made up of 60 seconds.  I'm not sure what comes next in the line of division, but you get the idea.

So it is our perception of time that changes, not time itself.

Having spent three weeks relaxing on holidays with no deadlines and no requirements being placed on me by others, I was not aware of time.  It didn't seem to be passing quickly or slowly.  The days were just what they were.  Almost from the moment I arrived back in the city though, I started to feel the sense of "time flying" again.  I think I've realised why.

My mindset is completely different when I'm on holidays.  I am living more in the present moment and less focussed on what is happening tomorrow or next week, or even "next".  When I'm back in work mode in the city, I have to have a plan for most days.  I'm needed to be places with people, or I need to prepare to be somewhere with people.  This is an even bigger focus now that I'm self-employed - I have to have a future focus to make sure I have enough work and enough clients to earn money.

The lesson for me seems to be to find a way to stay in the present, or at least spend some time each day being consciously in the present.  Otherwise, I'll be turning the calendar over to December tomorrow.

One of the things that helps when I'm on holidays with my family is to go for a walk with Alfie, the Jack Russell (you met him here).  Alfie is completely in the present.  He happily runs along and then his nose will pick up a scent and he'll follow that for a while, then there will be a puddle which is worth inspecting and then a hare will run past and Alfie will be off.  It's instructive to watch.  He works without a plan or an agenda.

There used to be three dogs to walk - Alfie, a Kelpie and a Labrador.  This sense of being in the moment was even greater when there were three of them to watch.  They seemed to be playful and curious and just happy to be in each other's company, walking along in the afternoon sunshine, enjoying the moment.  This seems like a good thing to do.

Is time flying for you? What do you do to slow it down?

Time for work.

As things wind down in preparation for Christmas, I have more time on my hands.  As a freelancer I am subject to the rhythms of the business world.  On one hand, it's helpful because I have time to do my own preparation for Christmas and holidays.  On the other hand, it's potentially a financial wilderness.

Working and living this way has its challenges.  I've really learnt that if my anxiety levels about work and money go up, the chances of work and money coming my way go down.  I think it's probably because if I'm anxious I'm less likely to be able to see opportunities and also I'm less capable of creative problem solving - something I'm usually good at.

One of my other personality traits that I need to be aware of is my ability to get stuff done is directly proportional to the amount of stuff I need to get done.  If I'm flat out busy I get everything done.  If I'm not, things linger until the very last minute and I struggle.  I still get everything done, but find the process is not as enjoyable.

These peaks and troughs were one of the reasons I started to write "divacultura", and made a commitment to write daily.  During the flat periods, without a clear focus, time would just slip by if I wasn't careful.  I was a very productive knitter and I read a lot of books, but I also recognised the potential to do nothing but watch my favourite shows on DVD.  I needed to recognise that I was blessed with something that I hadn't had enough of for all of my working life: time!  How dare I squander it!

As a creative person working in a corporate world, being able to focus on my creative life and practice was something I often sacrificed the moment the phone rang or an email flashed on the screen.  On reflection, it seems incomprehensible to me that I would not fight fiercely to claim that space for myself.  It was a matter of priorities.  And now I have them straight-er.

Tonight, I felt the compulsion to write, but also the lure of bed.  I am feeling mentally exhausted after a day working in an academic environment, co-teaching about simulated patients in health care and medical education.  My daily writing habit won!  Here I am honouring my commitment to my daily writing habit.

I knew when I set my parameters for this blog that they would be important: I was setting priorities in my life.  "divacultura" is a high priority each day for me; it must be written.  There have been days when I have not been able to honour this commitment because I've been interstate and not had the facilities.  The strength of the ingrained habit on these occasions has been very strong.  Where I have been unable to do the publishing, I've often hand written the post and typed it later, or turned up my thinking so that the words would flow when I was next at my computer.

This is a good thing that I have done.  Not every post has been a winner.  Sometimes that's not the point.  And in any artistic or creative pursuit, bad work is still work.  I heard writer Steve Hely (author of "How I became a Famous Novelist") talk about this at the Melbourne Writers Festival this year and it has really stuck in my mind.

Today's work has left me struck by the synergies I keep finding in all my different worlds of work.  Today I heard the concept of "practise, rehearsal, performance" presented.  As an artist, I'm incredibly familiar with this cycle and am aware that a tiny proportion of my time is spent in performance.  In the world of medicine, it's the opposite.  Most of their time is spent in high stakes performance and the opportunities for practise and rehearsal are limited!  I had never thought of it like that before.

What luxury I have being able to put the work in first.