Photo Credit: Litemind
Time management.
I’ll be perfectly honest. This is not one of my more refined skills… I tend to get distracted easily, become disinterested in boring assignments and wake up at the end of the week to question what I’ve really accomplished. This teamed up with the innate need to be extraordinarily hard on myself to accomplish out-of-this-world things all adds up to perfect madness.
But honestly, how do you manage your time with all the information out there constantly knocking down your door? News aggregators, RSS readers, TweetDeck, Google Alerts and e-newsletters help me aggregate info, but lately I’ve found myself constantly skimming or missing things all together. When do we have the time to take the time to read and share information? Is there too much information? Should we keep some of it to ourselves, or are we obligated to share? Are we actually reading what we are sharing, or do we find interesting headlines and want to associate ourselves with “discovering” a really fascinating article, trend or piece of news?
I’m not sure. I find that the amount of information available to me on a daily, hourly, up-to-the-minute basis is starting to become slightly overwhelming. I need an aggregator for my aggregators. I’m tired of just skimming the surface.. I want to dive deep, but as soon as I start to get into something an email pops up with another interesting headline or breaking news alert that I simply MUST pay attention to. Distraction accomplished.
And it’s not just reading and staying up on the latest and greatest in advertising, society, trends, information… no I actually have REAL work to do on top of that. To add to it, there’s things like this blog or my own personal interests I like to keep up with… oh and let’s not forget actually communicating with people, calling my mother, giving advice to friends, responding to a Facebook message.
It’s all becoming a little overwhelming and I just want to shut it down. Turn off the computer, shut down my cell phone and remember what life is all about. Breathe a little… get back to the basics. Take the time to read a book… outside. Exercise, learn a new skill…
Allow myself to just enjoy the silence without feeling lazy or unaccomplished… even if just for a moment.
Maybe someday I’ll learn to manage it all, or at least find a way to systematically handle the madness. Anyone else feel the same??
Yes, I couldn’t have said it better myself Alicia – that’s a problem I struggle with constantly. The amount of information at our fingertips is incredible and frequently that’s great, but other times, its distracting and counter-productive. Balancing getting work done and staying on top of what’s new is tough. Knowing what’s really valuable and what’s a complete waste of time is tough.
I know it… glad I’m not the only one in the boat. Did you happen to bring floaties?
Ha…I’m still in the boat so no drowning yet. I do want to go fishing though…
ha… the floaties are a “just in case” precaution… and an awesome fashion statement. Ha!
Fishing sounds good, although I hear the waters may be shark infested, so let’s be careful eh?
Absolutely. I’m not sure where to take this analogy next.
I do want to go fishing though, not in an analogy but in real life:)