Tuesday 20 December 2016

Treat Your Day As A Poem - Draft 1


You are weighed down with work.  You can't possibly get everything done.  You are going to miss vital deadlines and have very little to show for a day of stress, activity and intense unhappiness.

That is what you signed up for by taking on too many projects.  However, that doesn't mean that you have to make today a day that has no value or meaning.  If you give some thought to it, you can turn today into a poem.  You are after all engaged in a struggle, a struggle against life's slings and arrows.  The way today turns out is in itself a story. It might be a triumph, or it might be a disaster.  But either way it can be turned into a narrative that is meaningful.

How do you do this?  First off, keep notes of what you are doing.  If possible, do this every fifteen minutes.  When you are stressed you won't remember what you did an hour ago.  But if you keep note you can see where your time is going.   There is a good chance you are wasting a lot of time doing stuff that doesn't take you forward.  But you can't be making progress all the time. You have other priorities.   For example, a phone call from a friend is actually one of life's great pleasures.  If you have one, don't regard it as a problem.  It was a life enhancing experience.

But you will also be doing a lot of stuff that actually does take you forward.

So every day is a bit of a mixture of the good, the bad and the unexpectedly beneficial.  Try and turn this into a story.  It isn't helpful to look at a day as one that is a failure to work as a robot.  You are not a robot, you are a human being on a journey.   The steps you take are important, but so is stopping to pick the daisies.  A good day is not one where you have squashed your humanity out of yourself to clock up points on your to do list.  It is a day where you have stretched yourself a bit, learnt a little, experienced some triumphs and endured some disasters.  Even when you are overwhelmed with work you are stilll a human and you can turn your day into  a very human story.   It might even make sense to write it up at the end of the day.  It doesn't have to rhyme, but it can still be very human and poetic.

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