Continuing professional development … but what?
Following the web conference yesterday, I’m all fired up for working on my continuing professional development. But there’s so much that I could cover, what should I concentrate on? Should I concentrate on the business side of things and do some reading up on how to improve the business, or should I focus on my web design skills? My problem is that I want to do everything all at once. How do I get the right balance between the two main areas of what I do?
Here are a couple of options:
- I could make a list of everything I want to learn and prioritise it, concentrating on one thing at a time
- I could alternate between the two – read a book on web design, followed by a book on business, followed by web design etc.
One thing that I know is that I find it very difficult to stay focused on one thing for very long – not because of a lack of interest, but because there are always other things fighting for my attention. I might try the second approach and see if I can keep some kind of log of what I learn so that I don’t lose track because of too much chopping and changing. Do you think I can manage an hour of reading a day? I can but try. Hopefully I’ll start having a few things to review on here again.
How do I keep space for blogging?
I don’t even want to look at when my last blog post was. What I’m finding is that as soon as work reaches a certain level of busy-ness then I completely lose the inspiration to blog. It’s a space thing – space as in time to blog, but also mental space to think about what I want to write about. I then end up feeling guilty about not blogging which isn’t good for stress levels.
So, how can I keep on top of work (of course it’s great to be so busy, I’m not complaining!) but also leave myself the space for blogging?
Getting away from work occasionally helps. I went to a fab web conference in my part of the world yesterday and have come back feeling inspired to do all sorts of things. Need to keep hold of that inspiration and not let day-to-day stuff drain it!
How can I make sure that I don’t neglect my blog so much in future? Answers on a postcard please…
Knowing when to stop
I actually stopped work at 6 today. Problem is I’ve got so used to working all the time that I’m not sure what to do with myself. I know I’d like to chill out but seem to have forgotten how. Silly Emily.
Live to work / work to live
My work/life balance seems to be non-existent this week. Early mornings and late nights are what I seem to be up to. Just forcing myself to stop work for the day. It’s not good to work this late, especially when I was up at 6.30, but I did get one of those jobs done that kept getting pushed to the bottom of the list – so very satisfying. I’m hoping that leaves me with a clear day tomorrow to tackle some other important tasks.
Actually, I’m not usually one for working into the evening. Early mornings, yes, but come 5.30 I’m usually done for the day. I’m just much more of a morning person. But sometimes a bit of extra effort can help a lot – as long as it’s only occasionally. Generally I do like to chill out a bit more in the evenings, keep the stress levels down and all that. We just see to be so busy at the moment (and jolly pleased I am about it).
Some time to myself
I found myself getting up at 8.30 this morning thinking that it was going to be 11ish. I guess I haven’t adapted to the lighter mornings yet. It was good to have a head-start on the day. I spent the morning preparing the first draft of the presentation I have to do for my management course. I’m meeting up with my group tomorrow morning to have a run through. It feels good to have got to this stage as it’s been feeling like it’s been hanging over me for the last couple of weeks.
So, having done that I’m treating myself to some time to myself this afternoon. After a full-on week it actually feels odd to not have to be urgently doing anything. I think I’m going to do some work on goal setting, so I guess strictly speaking I will be working but it feels like it doesn’t count if it’s something that I actually want to do. Will intersperse with some mindless reading as well to make sure that I don’t overdo it. Tonight we’re off to my mother-in-law’s for dinner, so that will be a nice treat. Think we’re supposed to be round there for 5pm, so that will force me to stop doing anything remotely worky nice and early.
Stressy stress stress
I think this last week must go down as one of the most stressful I’ve had this year so far. We’ve had one of our bigger projects come to a head this week and I’ve been slogging away at getting it done. Full marks to the client for thorough testing but I did feel at times like I was being bombarded with questions. It didn’t help that we also had a number of meetings to go to, so I was run ragged going to a meeting and then rushing back to keep on top of the project work. Not to mention lots of previously quiet clients suddenly popping up with requests (it’s like they knew I was having a particularly busy week or something).
It goes to show that I still haven’t mastered stress relief. I felt like a gibbering wreck for most of the week. Thank goodness I’ve got my partner to chivvy me along and take up the slack as far as our other projects go, not to mention cook and do the washing up. Where would I be without him? I hope I can return the favour sometime when he has a busy week.
Lots of business planning has arisen from my experiences this week. This particular project ran over time considerably (to the point that I’m scared to look at the timesheet), which means that we will have ended up working for a very low hourly rate – not good at all. We’re reviewing how we approach these types of projects (ecommerce) to put a much more solid system in place. So, something positive will come out of the experience.
Am I a control freak?
For most of last week I was suffering with a nasty cold. I spent most of the time curled up with my duvet and laptop trying to keep on top of work. Probably should have given myself a break but if there’s work to do there’s work to do.
Now, I’m pretty much better but have been feeling a bit unsettled this weekend, kind of verging on the stressed-out. I think it’s because I feel like I’m not on top of things. There’s loads to do as always but I feel like I’m going to have to do some back-tracking to make sure that we’re where we should be with everything and nothing important has been forgotten.
Does that make me too much of a control freak, feeling like I need to be on top of things all the time? Maybe it means that I’m not trusting our project-tracking systems enough, so maybe I need to look at them and make sure that we have adequate systems in place so that if my brain stops functioning for a while I don’t need to stress out.
Goal Setting
Aside from the fact that I’m not much of a football fan, the problem I have with goal seeting is that I just don’t know where to stop.
What do I want? Everything
When do I want it? Now!
So my list of goals just keeps getting longer and longer and I start to feel overwhelmed and end up not achieving anything at all. Not very productive is it? Goals are a good thing so I need to learn how to deal with them more constructively. Instead of just an endless list of what I want to achieve I need some kind of action plan with achievable targets. I must stop myself trying to do everything at once and getting burnt out as a result.
There must be a knack to it, I just need to figure out what it is.
Goal!
Just had a real ‘durr!’ moment. I was searching our library catalogue for keyword ‘goals’. Was looking for some books on goal setting, achieving your goals … that type of thing. What did I find? Pages and pages of books about football. Took me ages to figure out why. I’m obviously not feeling very bright tonight – my excuse is that I’ve been suffering with a cold all week.
Fighting the fatigue
Two weeks since I lasted posted, that’s not good. Does that mean my good intentions immediately went out the window? Well, not entirely I hope. The last couple of weeks have mostly been more of the same (work, work, work) but there have been two noteworthy events:
- We’ve arranged for someone to come to us for four hours a week to help out with admin (yay!)
- We’ve had an approach which might result in us having the backing to do a project that we’ve been thinking of for a while (all very hush-hush at the moment, but it could be exciting stuff)
My latest ‘personal development’ project is to see if I can do something about my energy levels. I don’t know what it is but for the last couple of weeks I’ve been feeling really tired all the time. Could just be the time of year I suppose. Anyway, on Saturday I picked up a book on GI from the library and have few other books on various energy-related subjects on order. The GI thing is all very convincing in theory but this one seems to think that you should have time to cook three times a day. Yeah right! I’ll have to see what I can get out of it without necessarily following the eating plans to the letter.
