Juggling?

Are you a juggler? If you’ve ever been a mom or have family, held a job, and volunteered, then you’re a juggler.

I’ve been a juggler all my life. Even now when I don’t work out of my home, and the kids are grown and out and in their own homes, I’m juggling.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful to be able to juggle. Some folks just absolutely cannot. But for me now, there are days when the options are just too many. And again, I’m grateful that I have those options.

Have you ever read Steven Covey’s book THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE?   I have. Even got the booklets and tried to use the forms.  At the time, I was too busy to make it work. You really must be limited to juggling not more than three things to make his system work (IMHO). LOL

Here’s the quadrant Covey devised.

I never could operate out of the Important section on his quadrant. I’m always in the Urgent colums (Q1 & Q 3),  Never in the important Q2 and Q4 squares.

I’m writing this on Tuesday. I found some extra hours, which I should be using to continue the downsizing effort. I’ve cleaned a couple of shelves off my desk area the other day, but the main working space is still a disaster. But the deadline for having the desk (and the office, which is mostly Bob’s mess and not mine—at least I’ve attacked the “mine” part. LOL), is two weeks off. This is the goal:  Don’t know whether I’ll get there.

Hopefully then, our daughter Kathryn will be able to bring in a photographer to take pics of our house so we can get it on the market, leading to the move to the lakehouse.

But I have to have a blog ready to go for Thursday (today as you read this). I’ll have spent a good chunk of Wednesday at my grandson’s school for grandparent day. Then I’ll pick up his sister from school. So Tuesday is really the best day to get the bulk of the work done on the blog.

Urgent quadrant for sure.

Here’s his book

You probably recognize it. It was a very big deal when it came out.

Like I said, I operate out of the Urgent half almost always. What’s the item on the to-do list with the nearest deadline?

Here’s an example of something I should do and that would save me time in the long run. Clear out my Downloads file. On Tuesday I spent twenty minutes searching for the picture of Covey’s book. I’d downloaded it, but couldn’t find it among all the pics! I have a folder in which I can put used blog pictures (which is what most of these are), but there never seems to be a good several moments to do that because there’s always something more urgent to-do. Like write this blog. LOL

So I’ve confessed, now it’s your turn. Are you familiar with Covey’s book and his tenants? Which quadrant do you tend to work from? How do you manage the variety of items on your plate?

One of the questions I ask my guests Tuesday Author Chats is, “What’s a normal day like for you?” So what’s your normal day like? How good are you at juggling?

Look for updates next week about the Lakehouse, the next book I’m working on and maybe “Eating clean.”

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Wednesday, PS I finished the desk.Looks even better than pic above. 🙂