Much of what I do daily for clients involves hours of keying on my computer. During those hours I confess my mind wonders. In those wonderings a blog post is often conceived. Whether or not that same seedling matures into a blog post is debatable. Today it matured enough to share with you. I’ve decide to share these shorts with you as a new blog category called simple enough Observations While Typing. I hope they hold a nugget of value for you or stir you to stop and ponder.
Resistance in Doing Work
When I find myself resisting doing a task, often that I’ve done many times over, I know that it’s signal that something other than this specific task is off-balance. Why? Because I take on only the projects that I like doing and work with only clients that I respect, share their vision for the projects they introduce, and feel are interesting to me. Who wants to work on things they don’t like doing and most importantly who wants to hire someone with little interest in what they need done. Exactly.
So when I was e-filing – defined by my definition of filing court documents online for an attorney across country – for a client that I’ve worked with for over 7 years and truly look forward to seeing these emails arrive throughout a given week, I kept pushing off getting started this was my signal something was amiss.
Now figuring out what? Sigh. Really, I don’t have the time or motivation but knew from past experience that it’s worth blocking out some time to explore this and nip it in the bud.
Reviewing the past days and weeks in my mind I knew I’d been burning the candle at both ends. Work requests were hot, hot, hot! And while the iron is hot is the time to bump up the marketing and, yes, you know, if you’re a regular reader of the blog, how I feel about riding the marketing momentum.
In the personal side of my life we have had many requests and commitments so sleep was becoming a premium luxury. To accommodate the personal requests that were obligatory and honor my word of completing client work I was working longer hours than typical.
So my resistance was because I was temporarily pulling from my personal time to accommodate others. My rations of work-play-personal was out of balance. I confess some days during the past 30 days I hadn’t stepped outside the house for more than 15-35 minutes for personal reasons. If I left it was one of those obligatory commitments. I hadn’t taken time to sit outside, get some fresh air, or even listen to the birds sing.
The Fix
- Referred 3 new client inquiries to some most capable VA colleagues
- Scheduled breaks in my calendar when I take on big projects so that I’m not anchored to my office chair
- Loaded some fabulous books in my Kindle (not business related books) and committed to reading, getting consumed in the story, at least a few chapters a day. What have I read the past 30 days when I didn’t think I had any time? I read some Christian fictional stories (3 actually) about Sarah and Darius, about Rahab and Joshua, and about Dinah and Job. After reading about Job’s suffering I think I can buck up and get through my simple challenges.
- And my last and most fun change was buying a glider for my porch so I can sit, rock, and maybe work…if I choose to. A little shared fact about me is I seek out rocking chairs and love the relaxing, soothing movement. It’s a slower pace that soothes my soul unlike any other balm can.
When you get that twitch that something is amiss and are feeling resistant tell me what you do.