Catching Up is Hard to Do Part II

Here we are, over a week later, and I'm still not caught up.  In fact, I think I'm farther behind.

Man plans, God laughs.  Dr UpsideDown plans, God laughs his *** off.

Last week included a cold, a cat back to the vet, my first presentation to the Faculty Senate at my U, the fallout from that presentation, and a whole lot of time not used well.  Now my U is on fall break, and my plans to conquer the world in 4 days have once again not panned out.  Methinks I plan too big.

For those of you that are time management junkies like me, you're very familiar with Steven Covey's quadrant system.  He encourages us to take what we spend our time on and sort them into quadrants according to whether the thing to do is urgent/not urgent vs important/not important.  Here's a graphic from Helen Wilkie's blog.

From http://tipsfornewmanagers.com/is-it-important-or-just-urgent/

Like most who feel as stressed about time as I do, I spend a lot of my time in quadrants 1, 3 and 4.  Everything is on 4 second lead time, and that stresses me out so much that when I can breathe, I do a lot of quadrant 4 - watching TV, playing on facebook etc.  I want to move my life to quadrant 2, accepting that quadrant 1 things will still happen. 

So I'm rethinking what "catching up" really needs to be.  I'm not going to get all grading done, lectures for the next 3 weeks written, the house completely clean and organized, my Mom entertained and well cared for, and my finances perfectly balanced all in the next month.  It's just not reasonable.  Maybe I need to spend this break figuring out how to use the time I DO have more effectively.  I tell many of my struggling students to write schedules for their "unscheduled" time.  Clearly, I need do what I say.

So, where to now?  I'm going to meet a friend that I haven't seen in 6 months (quadrant 2) and spend the morning with her and her kids at a nearby museum.  I'm bringing Mom (quadrant 2).  Then I'll plow into grading (quadrant 1, but seems like 3 sometimes).