What do they say? Pride comes before a fall? Yeah, that’s right. Do you remember how enthusiastic I was with my information junkie’s diet and management plan, and how I said I’d be back with some results? Here they are:
- Posts in draft – 0;
- Ideas file for posts – 0;
- Working for that one hour daily – hardly, too many distractions.
Another Enemy of the Information Junkie – Time
It’s not just information I need to control, but how I spend my time too. I was so pleased with myself two weeks ago and let’s face it, it wasn’t a difficult schedule I set myself. I wasn’t trying to post every day, and even with the site redesign for my friend I had plenty of time to work on my own ideas.
I also broke the junkie diet: I found myself reading more blogs instead of less, but I didn’t even use that information to spark ideas for my own two blogs. Well, what’s done is done; what have I learned and how can I move on?
Discipline
My lack of progress can be summed up in that one word, or rather the lack of it! Working from home, being my own boss is fabulous, but it takes discipline to knuckle down to work, even when I don’t feel like it.
I’m not alone, am I? We all struggle with this at some point, and it often goes hand in hand with not seeing results from our efforts, and wondering if it’s worth it. The best thing we can do in this situation is to look forward instead of backwards. We know we’ve wasted time, we know we could have done more but that’s past; let’s start afresh today.
Measurable Goals
Nothing encourages us more than the feeling we have achieved what we set out to do. It is tempting to make a long list of things to do now that we’re deciding to knuckle down again. But if we do that, and we don’t get them all done, we’re going to feel disheartened rather than encouraged.
Here’s how I’m going to approach today:
- Look at all my tasks that need doing and prioritise them;
- Spread those tasks out over the next week, rather than try to get them all done at once;
- Choose one task I know I can get done today;
- Start using that one hour of focussed work again.
I’m not telling you anything new here; as information junkies we already know the answers to these problems, don’t we? All we need is to pause for a moment in all our busyness and make our daily to do list.
InfoJunkiesAnon Discussion
Are you feeling encouraged by your progress? If you’re feeling overwhelmed how do you deal with it?
