This morning I turned up late to a therapy session on the topic of time management! Not a good start. Not only that, but I also had not had time to prepare the information that the counsellor had told me last week would be helpful, eeek. Of course the truth is that I had had the time, but that I had not prioritised it. On Sunday I thought I would have time to prepare it on Tuesday, on Tuesday I thought I would have time on Thursday and then before I knew it it was Friday morning and it wasn't done. Instead I pulled out some information about my week that I had prepared when I first started Pacing, so I wasn't too useless in the end.
These counselling sessions are being offered to me free of charge throughout the month of July by a local Therapy Centre, a charity which relies on charitable donations and grants. I am keen to use them as my NHS Occupational Therapist, who has been really brilliant, can only offer me 6 sessions and I've already had 4 with her. I'm keen to save the last 2 sessions for when I think they would be really useful so I am supplementing them with these sessions offered by the Therapy Centre.
Anyway, back to Time Management. There's an awful lot of procrastination going on in my brain at the moment. I find it hard to set myself to tasks and see them through. I can start several things in a day and not finish any of them or I know i've got several things I could do, but don't even start them! Today the therapist thought this might be a result of all the relaxation I've been doing recently. After years of running at full steam, I am finally learning to slow down. This has happened due to the sessions with a physio and my occupational therapist who introduced me to pacing. I also saw an NHS specialist earlier this year who couldn't emphasise enough that I had to do less. She introduced me to the 50% rule: Only do 50% of what you know you can do - If you think you can walk a mile only walk half a mile - I think it's a good policy. In addition to this I had some Mitochondrial tests done by Dr Sarah Myhill which also suggested I needed to do less and the message is at last getting through. All this slowing down is really good for me, but it's not helping my time management much.
I have been very good at saying "No" to things recently, this is something that has been difficult for me in the past. I now find saying "No" quite liberating and get a buzz out of knowing I have done the right thing. Where I struggle with this is when it involves the children. If someone rings and says "We're going to the park this afternoon, do you want to come?" I find it harder to say no, when sometimes perhaps I should. This is because I don't like to feel that the children are missing out because of my reduced energy levels or my need for rest.
Anyway, my task for the next two weeks is to turn my mind to time management, it's nothing complicated, just the basic stuff that anyone in a work environment is using every day - a prioritised action list. I am going to create a "Mega Master To Do List". Just starting to create such a list seems like a daunting task at the moment, but I'm sure it will help. Then I need to prioritise. If I can then find the completely empty week that is going to be necessary to tackle my sons bedroom that would be useful : )
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