You Can Only Do...

Friday Happynings

Last week, I had half a post written when I realized that I had written something similar the week before. It was another “contentment” piece. Today I stepped out on my balcony in the cool quiet of the early morning, cup of coffee in hand, and recognized that I was about to head down that road again. At this point, I feel like I am rubbing it in. Let’s just say that the air is blessedly cool; the coffee is hot. There is more silence than noise and I am content.

I am up earlier these days. The sun was too strong to walk comfortably so we pushed our start time to earlier and manage to make it back before the day becomes unbearable. But I’m waking up before my alarm, which probably means I am in the right sleep cycle. I don’t mind because it makes my morning just a bit more leisurely.

“Why not just set your alarm for ten minutes earlier?” you ask.

Because then I’d need to wake up ten minutes before that one went off to feel like I have “extra” time and this gal can recognize a slippery slope when she sees one.

This week has been jam-packed with THINGS I MUST GET DONE(!). I’m heading to Ireland next week to meet up with my sister and I have some prep work to do for that. It will involve struggling with the Ryan Air app and I am not looking forward to it. Packing is easy—I do it the day or night before and I pack light. This week has mostly been making sure my clients are taken care of before I go gallivanting over the Irish countryside.

And getting my residency paperwork in.

My Impossible To-Do Lists

The list is deceptively short. One line reads “Finish first draft of book for ghostwriting client.” I am wading through twelve hours of transcripts, tens of thousands of words, and reorganizing the structure. I am finding spots where I want to add more information which will involve research or further interviews. It’s all normal and part of the process, but the time fuse is lit. Additionally, I can only focus on the material for about two hours before I start getting lost in the weeds and need to take a break. I get “closer” every session, but right now it’s still a messy muddle that needs to be clarified. By Tuesday.

I also have another client’s book that has not behaved well. It was hard to nail down the cover design, and once it was finalized, the files sent by the designer were not formatted properly, resulting in rejection and reworkings—not by the original designer who is a very good designer but not a book cover person. There have been publishing hang-ups and small items to correct and every time you correct them, there’s a delay in the processing. Basically a lot of back and forth that is not hard, but is time-consuming.

My residency is up for renewal (Oh, yeah, there will be a separate post for that!), and this time around, it requires substantially more paperwork. Last time I filled out a simple online form, uploaded my passport info page, and paid the fee. This time, the new agency, AIMA, wants all sorts of documentation, at least one of which has to come from the local council and another has to be notarized. Everything has to be scanned, pdf’d, and uploaded. Fortunately I have a secret weapon named Eva who really should hire herself out to do this for people. (She and her husband Scott are getting paid in pound cake. Which is baking right now.)

And of course, there’s all the regular stuff: blog posts for various sites, marketing my books, housework and grocery shopping, responding to emails, keeping up with friends and family and the beat goes on.

Boulders, Rocks, Pebbles? Rocks, Pebbles, Sand? Whatever.

We all have that list—all the stuff we need to do and all the stuff we want to do and never enough time to squeeze it all in. Even my retired friends look around as night falls and ask, “Where did the day go?”

I cannot do as much in a day as I once did. Or at least it feels that way. If I get one “big thing” done a day, and two or three medium and small things (Pebbles? Sand?), I call it good. Some days I get TWO big things done and feel inordinately proud.

I have trained myself to keep my daily to-do list limited to that which is humanly possible. I can’t remember the last time I crossed off everything on the list. I have some items on my list that have carried over for months—tasks I need to do for myself that (rightfully) get deprioritized by client needs. “Get my hair cut” was one of those things. Simple. Takes about an hour. That only got crossed off the list because I was chatting with a friend right near the stylist’s shop and I mentioned I needed to make an appointment. We walked the few steps and the stylist was finishing up with a gentleman and said she’d take me right there and then. #winning.

Glass Half Empty or Half Full?

My favorite expression these days is “You can only get done what you can get done.”

The amount of work I set out to do each day does not seem impossible when I make my list.

I have my carefully planned two-hour time blocks that look organized, logical, and doable.

Ha!

I start well and then something explodes, my beautiful schedule gets shredded, and once again, at the end of the day, I am disappointed in myself and my lack of progress.

Or, I’m disappointed in myself until someone says, “I can’t believe the amount of content you put out.” (And thank you for the external validation!)

And I do put out a lot of content in various formats: articles, newsletters, marketing materials, client work, my writing, tips, prompts, whatever. (And yes, I am looking to dial things back. Soon. REALLY SOON!) I realize I am seeing the glass half empty but I’m the only one who knows how big my glass is.

Just as I have trained myself to not expect my ridiculously ambitious task list to get completed on a daily basis, I need to train my brain to look at the progress I have made each day and recognize two things:

1. You can only do what you can do.

2. It will all get done.

Because it DOES all get done. Maybe not in the exact time frame I have set out for myself, but within the parameters of close enough.

Mostly, I’m learning not to feel guilty when I don’t accomplish the impossible.

How about you? Are your expectations of yourself maybe a little too high when you put them through the lens of reality?