I am just going to write and see where this goes. Writing is my way of unscrambling my thoughts and reprioritising what is important.
TLDR: You cannot do everything you want at the same time, listen to your body, rest.
For regular readers
It has been an intense couple of weeks. I have been pushing it hard and losing sleep to mosquitoes and other things mostly outside of my control. I try to nap whenever I can but I clearly did not get enough rest. My productivity was high at the start of the week but it dropped off quickly the more tired I got. I have been constantly distracted. Thankfully, my classes have been okay this week.
I am back to working from home again so I get to see family a lot more and have no commute. I think maybe the lack of commute may have contributed to my distraction. I often use the time to think and process what is going on in my head. More recently there has been no space between home and starting a class. Time to add in a walk before work.
I have only two weeks left of the current job, then a week off to recover, and then it is on to the new job as a manager, which I am fairly excited about.
I am excited because of the growth it offers. The pay is initially lower, but what I can learn from the job is priceless as long as I am intentional in my learning and reflecting. I believe this will pay off in the future. This is nothing like anything I have done before (other than some cover teaching). I have been listening to countless YouTube videos and audiobooks from expert leaders to help me prepare, but the real learning will be when I start. I am sure I will have a lot to write about.
Muddled
As I hinted at before, I have become a bit foggy and distracted due to insufficient rest. I have taking strategic naps and rest at every opportunity, but various factors out of my control have interrupted or delayed rest. I could have skipped a day of learning, but the workload is intense and there are a couple of things I am behind on-I need to make progress each day. Knowing my mental capacity was strained, my strategy this week was to focus on input over output which served me fairly well. I had to make notes to really keep me focused and not waste my time.
You cannot do everything at the same time
It frustrates me that you cannot do everything you want to at the same time. If you try, you do a mediocre or bad job of all of them.
In addition to writing here, I have a passion project I would love to spend all my working time on, but my main profession pays the bills and my study for a Diploma and for my new job must take priority because of the timing, but also because of the skills and knowledge I will develop. These will ultimately benefit my passion project, so I have readjusted the timing on it, but I want it completed by 2024 at the latest.
Priorities
I decided that writing here and working on the passion project will be exclusively for weekends (when I never study for the Diploma). This means I have to be more efficient on weekends to make significant progress. This is difficult when I am tired. I would love to be posting here every week, but I am not always refreshed and focused enough to write anything meaningful.
I am unclear how valuable this post is for you, but for me, it has been a valuable exercise in clearing the cobwebs of my mind and reprioritising.
By writing this, I hope it can at least serve as a tool to show you the value of rest and finding an outlet to clear your mind and prioritise what is important to you.
I have to accept that I might not always make much progress. That is okay though, as a little progress each week compounds, and I am also making notes during the week of anything I learn that can contribute to the project.
Listen to your body
I have written about this before, but when you are tired, decision making is impaired. It is easy to focus your attention on the wrong things. There comes a point where there is absolutely no use in trying to produce-you just need to relax/rest/sleep. Listen to your body. That is me out.
thejourneyx 