Dracula, victory, 80% full.

 It’s Monday lunch break, you know what that means (unless I have other work I need to do then).

Blog time! Ever since my lightbulb moment about time management and my emotionally complex feelings around it, things have felt a little lighter. And my perspective has changed a bit. More possibility available to me.

This week’s likely going to be more intense than usual, since I’ll be on my own in the afternoon’s, due to being a little short-staffed. This is a frequent thing with Covid, since there is so much more need for staff. Drop off and pick up requires more staff. Online as well as in person classes requires more staff, keeping late dismissal kids in their separate bubbles requires more staff. So they’ve had to hire a bunch, and I suspect there is a high turnover with new staff.

So, there’s that. I’m trying to make a list of all the things I’m doing, so I can hopefully cut down on some of them. I read a little snippet of an article by Cal Newport about how knowledge workers get burnt out because they are almost always overworked: they don’t start saying no to things until they feel overwhelmed, but by then they’ve already got too much on their plate. He suggests saying no once they’ve got what feels like 80% full plate, because that will end up being totally full. The eating analogy is easy to make at this point, we’re already talking about plates. When you eat it takes a few minutes to register in your stomach the food you’ve eaten, so stopping when your 80% full is usually a good estimate to make sure you don’t feel stuffed and logy (it took me a while to find the right spelling for that. I thought logee or lowgi or something).

I guess I’m getting more comfortable with the idea that managing my time is to a large extent about not doing most things so I have time for the most important things, plus rest. And, even my ability to focus on what’s important and get it done seems improved.

Hopefully this trend continues. I’m also considering using the Fogg habit system to create some tiny habits around time and priority management to turn some basic useful tasks into permanent habits. So, good things on that front.

My other main front for improvement is as a teacher. Working on that, but no huge breakthroughs. Also, had a really cool dream last night, going on an epic adventure to defeat Dracula and his armies from ravaging the land. I don’t have time to go into the details, but it seemed very relevant in it’s metaphor and featured a cameo by my favorite teacher with a little bit of great wisdom. Basically, you can do this yourself, but can you protect your mind and thoughts from the enemy (thoughts). All habits and actions start as thoughts. That’s the lynch pin. Master your thoughts, your mind, master everything.

Gotta go, by for now!