A Lesson on Time

I delved into my book on time management hoping to come away with a laundry list of secret tactics on how to master the flow of time and with it harness the power of the universe for my interests.  Ok, maybe I wasn't hoping for quite that much, but I was surprised (and a little bit disappointed) at first when I found that even the experts are telling me that I need to make choices in my life.  You know that saying: "You can't have your cake and eat it, too?"  I basically tried to defy that constantly, resulting in a cycle that made me feel exhausted, unaccomplished, and sometimes inadequate as I completed too many things, none of them ever measuring up to my standards of perfection. 

Then, I read Rita Emmett's Manage Your Time to Reduce Your Stress.  Its compact size gave it an edge when I was choosing which time management book to read.  It turns out that the book is not only compact, but also easy to read and enlightening.  I wish that all non-fiction writing were packaged in such a neat and concise little bundle.  Anyway, here go the tidbits of information that most caught my attention. 

·      The book goes through a very logical step-by-step process and the titles to each chapter (which spell out stress with their initial letters) outline it all very well.

o   Search for and select what is valuable in your life

o   Trash perfectionism

o   Reach for realistic goals that are both relevant and rewarding

o   Eliminate what you can and streamline everything else

o   Set boundaries at work and at home

o   Strive to recharge your battery daily

·      In a sub-section entitled “Take Care of You,” Rita Emmett wrote the following:

“Keep in mind the classic example of airplane oxygen masks.  The flight attendant announces that in case of emergency the oxygen mask will drop down.  The attendant also warns that if you’re on a plane with someone who is not able to care for himself, you should put your oxygen mask on first.  If you try to put it on the other person first, you might pass out and be totally useless to help the person who depends on you.  The same is true with self-care.  Take care of yourself first, otherwise you might burn out and not be any good to those you care for.”

It completely baffled me to read this.  Considering that I am a flight attendant and inform people of this multiple times a day, you would think that it would be obvious, but somehow, I had never made the connection. 

·      Reach for excellence rather than perfection.  Nobody is perfect, so rather than setting yourself up for defeat, why not strive to excel in what you do?  This thought took my mind back to high school, where some of the girls in my class bragged about being perfectionists.  I hadn’t even heard the word “perfectionist” before then.  I had always made A’s and B’s, but had never thought to try to be perfect.  I guess the funny thing about peer pressure is that it sometimes catches hold of you in ways you don’t even notice.  I never gave in on the obvious topics like drugs and social ‘clicks,’ but now, about a decade after graduating from high school, I came to realize that those girls made me try to be a perfectionist, too. 

·      Emmett addresses goal stoppers, the obstacles that interrupt and sabotage your progress towards a goal, and stresses the importance of recognizing the goal stopper, acknowledging that this is a normal thing that happens to everyone, and then finding a way to take even a small step towards your goal.  Taking the first step generally thwarts the goal stoppers’ power over your progress.

·      Writing down your goal has a magical power to help you work towards that goal, even if it’s written in lipstick on your bathroom wall.

·      If work is overwhelming, carve out a little bit of time to focus on life goals.  Achieving goals in your personal life can put things into perspective, refresh you, and help alleviate job stress.

·      Work hard. Play hard.

·      Remember how families would actually not do anything on Sunday?  They would go to church and eat together, and relax and reconnect and re-center themselves.  We’ve forgotten to do this, but only now that we’ve given it up do we see its value. 

·      If you do something hoping to get something out of it, set those goals in advance to help you stay focused.  For example, if you attend a conference, maybe set a goal to introduce yourself to x number of people if you need to network, or attend certain lectures that will benefit you the most. 

·      Learn to say no to things that remove your focus from what is important to you or that do not align with your values.

·      The author told a story about focusing on your goal.  The story is of three children who, on a snowy day, make a bet to see who can walk the straightest path across a field to a tree.  The first keeps looking at her feet as she put one in front of the other very carefully, but strayed off to the side instead of ending up at the tree.  The second keeps looking back at his footprints to make sure he was going the right way, but ended up zigzagging her way across the field.  The third child looked straight at the tree and confidently walked across the field.  The path her footprints traced were perfectly straight.  So, it’s important to focus on your goal instead of micromanaging yourself for fear of making a mistake or focusing on past mistakes.  A clear vision of your goal will lead you on the clearest, straightest path towards that goal.  This makes me think of this project.  The goal of this project is to find out what direction I want to move towards in my life.  So, if I learn anything from this, my goal in this project is actually to find my goal in life, or at least for the next step in my life.

·      “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” -Ayn Rand

·      “If you don’t know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.” –Henry Kissinger

·      “Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals.” –Henry Ford

·      Eliminate and streamline:  Figure out what your self-worth is tied to.  Is it what others think of you, or what you own?  You control your self-worth.  Only you can decide to align your idea of self-worth to your values.  Next, question before committing.  Ask yourself: Do I really need to buy/do/own/join/spend my time on this?  Do I need this in my life?  It’s the same thing we should be doing with all the sugary and fattening treats that we sometimes crave.  This is a bit of an exercise in self-control, but ties directly to your values.  If you don’t know what you value, you cannot answer these questions.  If the answer to the question is no, then eliminate it.  Think about it this way: Who is the authority of what is important and what is enough for you?  If you decide that something isn’t important or isn’t necessary, or is in excess, then it is up to you to eliminate it from your life.

·      Use a time log.  This is such a hard concept for me to adopt because I’ll do it for a while, get so wrapped up in doing it that I spend more time on the time log than anything else, allowing it to become a distraction, and then forget about it halfway through the day.  However, the author emphasizes the importance of recording your actions in a time log to analyze where your time is going. 

·      Avoid “commitment overload” by learning to say no to other people’s requests when your plate is already full of things that are priorities to you.

·      Streamlining might even involve saying no to things that sound inviting.  The thing is that like anything else, moderation is key.  Too many fun activities can leave a person drained and stressed.  I am slowly learning this lesson.  My confession is that there are times when I feel stressed out about meeting up with friends.  I love my friends and I want so much to spend time with them.  However, there are times when I have so many other things going on and pulling me in different directions that, if a friend invites me out, I feel torn between self-preservation (that involves saying no) and the sense of desire to spend time with them (which involves pulling energy from emergency stores that I’m pretty sure are always close to depletion). 

·      The clutter monster.  Clutter is everywhere in my life, and it drives me crazy.  I know that my apartment is small and, to a certain extent, will be cramped no matter now many things I get rid of.  However, my space can get so disorganized sometimes (due more to my lack of time to keep things tidy than anything else) that I lose things, important things, and then rip apart my room while frantically searching for these things that I have misplaced.  I misplaced an extra camera battery at some point and when I was going on vacation I was so stressed out about finding it (and had no idea where it was) that I actually had to go online and order a new one.  Ms. Emmett talks about eliminating and streamlining information and paper by creating systems such as FAQ sheets and reminders on your computer.  She also discusses outsourcing tasks such as hiring a lawn mowing service or a house cleaning service if that is something that creates a lot of undue stress in your life.   She also mentions scheduling streamlining time, whether it’s a few minutes every day or a full day every week or month.  The key to the success of streamlining time is going into ‘elimination mode,’ where anything that you don’t need gets thrown out, recycled, or donated. 

·      Rita Emmett’s “Do-Not-Do List:”

o   Compare yourself to others.

o   Believe you have to work to the point of exhaustion to be considered a capable person.

o   Try to please everybody you know.

o   Spend your time acting on everybody else’s priorities.

o   Say yes to every request.

o   Think that being busy is a standard of success.

o   Consider it necessary to take care of every single person you know in order to be liked.

o   Believe that you never have time for your priorities.

o   Hang on to angers and resentments.

o   Try to live up to the expectations of everyone in the world (including you)

o   Strive to be so independent you never need (or are able) to ask for help from others.

o   Spend time on busywork that’s not important to you.

·      Multifocusing vs. Multitasking.  In this section, Ms. Emmett explains that when most of us multitask, we divide our attention and focus between two different actions (which she calls multifocusing).  If both tasks require focus and concentration, we will not be able to perform either of them well while focusing on both at once.  Instead, if you choose to multitask, make sure one of the activities does not require a lot of mental concentration.  For example, you might be able to fold laundry and plan your grocery list at the same time if you are able to plan your grocery list without standing in front of the fridge or scouring through cookbooks.  If the task is important and requires a lot of attention, go ahead and turn the ringer off your phone so you can devote your undivided attention to it and do a good job.

·      Set boundaries for yourself.  Respect your own needs and priorities and set boundaries.  For example, I am currently on a trip that I didn’t want.  I was on call and I saw that there were a lot of people that are junior to me on call, so I was relieved to think that they wouldn’t call me, at least for a day, and I’d have that time to catch up on sleep, cleaning my apartment, getting rid of some of my clutter, as well as catching up on reading and planning a new meal plan for myself.  Realistically, I couldn’t have gotten all, or even half of those things done if I’d had the day off, but I wanted to try because I am hardly ever home to do these things.   To my dismay they called me for a three-day trip flying out of Newark.  Basically, that trip was the last thing I wanted.  Having no choice, I went to work.  Exhausted, we arrived at the hotel in Pittsburgh around 11pm.  The crew wanted to go down for a drink, and they were so nice that I said I’d go down, too.  It was only when I reached my room that I realized how tired I was and how much I needed to just relax and take a shower and try out my new body scrub and trim my nails.  I was nervous to call and tell them that I wasn’t going down after all.  I imagined how they would call me a “slam-clicker” (referring to a flight attendant who doesn’t take advantage of all the places that the job takes her, but instead slams the door and clicks the lock until the next day when it is time to go back to the airport) and I didn’t want them to think that I am because normally I am not.  Then I realized that it doesn’t matter what they think, but rather what I know and what I need.  I called my coworker and she said that they would miss me, but it wasn’t as difficult as I’d imagined and, once I had hung the phone up, I felt so proud of myself for being good to me and doing what I needed to do to stay healthy and sane. 

·      Set time aside to “recharge your battery” every day.  This single thing can prevent you from getting burned out.  Maybe for you it’s taking a warm bath with a nicely scented scrub, working out, going for a walk with your dog or kids or husband or boyfriend or friend or just you and God, or maybe it’s pulling out your viola or flute (you know who you are), or curling up in a comfy armchair with some hot cocoa and a good (relaxing) book.  Whatever it is, this is something that should be a priority.  Even though it seems selfish, this is one small thing that can refresh you so that you have the energy and peace to continue going after the big goals that you have set.  Also, notice that I didn’t mention tv.  I can’t remember where exactly I read it, but watching tv actually doesn’t refresh you very much, and in contributes to weight gain and health problems.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t plan on giving up tv, but I will try to incorporate my battery recharging activity into my day before I start watching a tv show. 

·      You’ve got to do your part.  You can’t expect God or anyone else to take care of you and not do anything to take care of yourself.  A close friend recently told me she was thinking of whom her best friends are and if she would count herself among them.  I started thinking about it and realized that she, like me, puts her loved ones ahead of herself.  Together we realized that we are not our own best friends.  If we were, we would at least take as good care of ourselves as we do our friends.  Then we realized that we should strive to take care of ourselves and be our own best friends.  We are fortunate to have friends who, like us, take care of their friends (e.g.: they care for us), but we also realized that what our friends do or don’t do is out of our control, but that if we don’t take care of ourselves, we could burn out and get to a point where we cannot care for them either. 

·      You sometimes have to tell people what you need.  Sometimes it might seem like you contradict yourself from moment to moment, and that is fine, because our lives are in constant motion and things change on a moment-to-moment basis.  People don’t have ESP, they can’t guess (accurately anyway) what you are thinking, feeling, or what you need from them.  If  you know you have a specific need, it’s up to you to communicate that. 

·      The essence of a little anecdote in the book states that trying to eliminate stress from your life is like taking a bucket of water out of a lake, in the sense that the “hole” would just fill up with other water (stress).  Instead, try adding more sources of fun and joy and laughter into your life. 

·      Practice meditation, whether traditionally or by simply focusing on something calming very deliberately, like listening to the sounds of nature when you take a walk, or taking the time to write down something that you saw that was beautiful or that you are grateful for.  Even when you are completely surrounded by people and noise, you can close your eyes for 10 seconds and just listen to the sound of your breath or think of how beautiful the moon looked the night before.

·      Take a break.  We live in a culture that is all about going places and getting there fast.  I’ve mentioned this in my blog before and everything I read keeps reminding me of the importance of taking some time for yourself when you need to recharge. 

·      Make an appointment with yourself.  If you feel like you’re so busy that the last bullet point doesn’t apply to you, then you desperately need this one.  Think about it.  Sometimes making an appointment with yourself to do whatever it is that you enjoy doing can be as important to your health as keeping your appointment to the dentist.  Would you rather see the dentist every six months for a cleaning or put it off for five years and end up getting teeth pulled or bridges put in because you let your oral health go unattended?  It’s the same concept.  Would you rather keep a little appointment with yourself daily or weekly or would you rather end up in a quarter, mid or later-life crisis, in a state of depression, or burnout, or any other of a million things that can happen including belly fat and heart disease (which have direct links to stress) because you had too much to do to take a little time for yourself?

·      No more guilt.  No one should feel guilty about taking care of him or herself.  God gave us a body and mind that can handle a lot of stress, but they are not unbreakable.  However, He also gave us the tools to take care of that body and that mind and now it is up to us to exercise good stewardship of these gifts. 

·      Dr. Norman Vincent Peale is quoted: “Enthusiasm creates energy.”  In this vein, it is our duty to find something we are enthusiastic about that will give us the energy to incorporate it into our busy lives, because those things will help us sidestep burnout.

·      Some other energy boosters include: exercise, decreasing caffeine and sugar intake in favor of fruits and veggies, sleep and nap, drink water, do something fun, take a break, eat healthy snacks like nuts, get fresh air, learn yoga, eat a variety of foods to incorporate all the vitamins and minerals that you need.

·      Some tips to put it all together: put things into perspective (“if this is the worst thing that happens today, I’m doing pretty well”), decide what to do (at least figure out the first step, you can always decide later on the next step or change the way you do things, but you can’t change anything if you aren’t doing anything), start with something little to make the rest easier, give yourself an hour a week and use a timer to measure it (ignore everything else during that hour, including the phone), do the thing you’re dreading first (give yourself a reward if you need to), cherish the present because it’s the only thing that you can’t get back once it’s gone.

·      ‘The saddest words of tongue or pen / Are these four words: “It might have been.”’ –John Greenleaf Whittier

So, there you have the summary of all the pages I dog-eared in “Manage Your Time to Reduce Your Stress.”  It was a great book and, although I was upset and stressed out that I hadn’t yet gotten around to blogging about it (or blogging at all in the last few days), I am happy that I was able to review all of these little nuggets of wisdom a while after putting the book down.  There were still a couple of quotes and other tips that I wanted to distill from the book (such as tips on how to get better sleep), but I’ll include those in a separate post since I just wrote a novel today. 

As always, thanks for reading and accompanying me on this journey!

Ugh! I Want It All!

I've been hoping to get a good chunk of time to sit down and write about what I learned from reading about time management for a few days since I finished the book, but instead I've been running around trying to catch up with a life that seems to have kept going without me during the time I was away in Italy.  I've been running errands at this store and that, checking my banking situation, preparing for weddings (I'll be so happy when I finally cross "pick up dress from David's Bridal" off of my to do list) and visiting with my family, all while combating the sneakiest of colds that has been allowing me to function but only at the pace of a snail in the desert.  So, now I sit here, writing to what I feel like is a dwindling number of loyal friends who read out of sheer love for me, trying to find a good excuse for why I haven't had the time to write about time management.  Meanwhile, I am imagining Rita Emmett looking straight through me, wagging her finger and telling me that I really need to stop and examine my priorities and establish goals.  She would tell me that I need to choose.  I don't like choosing, though.  I have always wanted to have everything.

My mother repeated countless times throughout my childhood years (and even now) that I can't have my cake and eat it, too, but somehow that lesson never really sunk in.  For example, why can't I taste every different kind of ice cream?  I don't want to have a whole scoop of each flavor, just a taste.  That's why, during my vacation I sampled 27 different flavors of gelato, one in honor of each year I've been alive.  It took me almost two whole weeks to accomplish this feat, but it wasn't impossible.  So, I ask, why can't I be a great employee, friend, daughter, girlfriend, Catholic, and roommate and spend most of my time away for work while carving out time to spend with all my loved ones, and keep some time to myself to pursue my dreams, passions, and aspirations, let alone do laundry?  And if I have any male readers at this point, I'd like to point out that this is not atypical for a woman and it only gets worse when it comes time for us to choose between all this (particularly the career) and having children.  That is, however, a pretty big tangent to lean off of at midnight, so I'll skew back to my main topic and leave the gender issues for another day.

So, to conclude my little rant, I'll give you the concise one point summary of my studies in time management, and then I'll try to give more details in the next few days.

Bottom line: Much as I try, I cannot have it all; I will have to finally learn how to make a choice and then how to say no.

For my first exercise in making a choice, I have forced myself to choose only one picture to add to today's post.  This photo shows the first tiramisu that I enjoyed in Italy with a beautiful cappuccino in the background.  The interesting thing is that another hopeless endeavor of mine has become finding a way of making my own cappuccino now that I am back and desperately miss the ones I enjoyed daily in Italy.  Problem: the coffee in America always makes me really jittery!

The Time - Stress Connection

Coming back from vacation has not been easy.  I started out stressed about two of my friends getting stuck in Italy for an extra day.  It sounds exciting, but when you're flying standby an extra day isn't as much a treat as it is a torture device to see how many times you can pack up and go to the airport and ask your loved ones to pick you up and check out of your hotel, only to have to check back into a hotel (and first pray that they have a room) and pray that by the grace of God there will be a seat for you on the next day's flight. 

After my friends made it back, I stressed out about unpacking, repacking for work, finding a clean uniform because I forgot to take my uniforms to the cleaners before I left, and needing to clean the apartment. 

Then, to add to the whole array of stressors that were already competing for my attention, I realized that it was not just the Italian pollens that were kicking my butt, but that somehow they were conspiring with the American pollens to make me itch, sneeze, and water through the rest of spring and summer. 

Do you want to know what the cherry on top of the milkshake was?  I am sick.  I got sick while I was still in Italy, but it's been that sneaky kind of sick that doesn't totally knock you down but just secretly saps you of energy. 

I went to work anyway, ignoring most of the things that were stressing me out, refusing to let go of my vacation relaxation.  The result?  Whatever I'm sick with sneaked down into my chest.  It is still an upper respiratory thing, but now I've developed a cough that I can feel in my chest. 

Bad news: I had to call out of work. 
Good news: I'm taking care of myself, I'm still getting paid, and forcing myself to stay in bed and rest gave me the time that I needed to finish reading my time management book.  

I'll write more later about what I gathered from Rita Emmett's Manage Your Time to Reduce Your Stress.  In the meantime, I hope you enjoy some photos on our trip to the Colosseum in Rome.   

Our first glimpse of the Colosseum.  What a beautiful day it was!

Oil lamps on display inside the Colosseum.

Inside the Colosseum.  You can see they added a sandy platform on the end to show where the floor of the arena was.  What you see now is what was below the arena, where they kept the gladiators and animals.