Managing my time

I've been bitching and moaning for months about how I don't have enough time to do everything I need to do. Projects, reading, operations stuff..... It felt like I was constantly busy, but nothing was getting done. When having Valentine's dinner with Russ, and complaining some more, I said the magic words: "I control my own schedule." Meaning my boss isn't managing my time; he just expects that I will get stuff done. So, after that epiphany, I realized that, hey, maybe I could do a better job of organizing my time.

After so many years of working, I've come to know about myself that I don't get into productive, let's-get-this-done mode until after lunch. So, I've scheduled my mornings (when I don't have meetings) to by my reading time. That's reading professional journals, websites, blogs, and books that I need to keep up with what's going on, and maybe (hopefully) learn something new.

The afternoons will be spent working on projects. Monday mornings will be my time to schedule specific things for the week, slotting each into an appropriate afternoon time slot. I think that part of my problem before was feeling overwhelmed by everything that needed to be done, and not having a handle on what exactly that was. So it just all seemed completely overwhelming. So, I've figured out what exactly needs to be done for each project. Yeah, yeah, that's Project Management 101. I'd just forgotten the basics.

Random thoughts

Oh, where to start?

Yesterday had a horrible migraine. Part hormonal, surely, but also part stress. I've decided to try the diet approach that I heard about on NPR last summer, so I'm going to go buy the guy's book today:

Heal Your Headache: The 1-2-3 Program for Taking Charge of Your Pain by David Buchholz

We'll see how it goes.

Now we're trying to figure out what to do with Will for the summer. I have to call the YWCA to see what they offer for the summer. The other options are UBCCC and Park School, the latter of which is a wonderful program but really, really expensive. Ugh.