Time and Efficiency

A windy morning as I sit here in front the computer in New Home.

The wind seems to match my mood this week: blown hither and yon by elements beyond my control. There's a very real sense in my life that I am so often in very small control of events that impact it, and more often it's riding the waves rather than directing them that is the task of the day.

I know. This disagrees with most of the success literature you will read: "Control your time! Do high value items! Choose what you engage in for maximum effectiveness"! And so on. And maybe that's true in some things. But not nearly most of them.

I had to do something yesterday I have seldom (if ever) had to do: talk to my boss about work load, simply saying that "I can't do everything that I've been tasked with." I hated doing it - it's like an admission of guilt, of laziness, of failure - of putting myself one step closer to that line of being first in the event of a layoff.

But the reality is that I simply can't. Thanks to keeping track of time (see yesterday's post), I've got a better of sense of how long things take - and guess what, they inevitably take longer than someone thinks. However, I seem to consistently carry around this burden of guilt that I should be able to, or can - that somehow I can increase my efficiency to 110%, which I suppose I could do if I cut off every activity not directly related to accomplishing a needed task.

The ironic thing about that last thought is that even if I did that, it still would not necessarily correlate to efficiency. Why? Because I am still at the mercy of those winds not of my choosing.

And there is nothing sillier than being efficient at a useless task of no importance.