You may recall from Monday’s post that one of the things that was making me feel anxious was the fact that I hadn’t been keeping my calendar up to date. I was starting to get really worried that I was going to forget an appointment, double-book myself, miss something I really wanted to do, etc.
Goodness knows it’s happened often enough, but I’d been really making a practice of keeping my calendar with me whenever I’m checking email, reading the school newsletter, talking on the phone, going to a meeting etc. And I was doing pretty well. I hadn’t had to apologize for goofing up in quite a while, so that was a good thing!
But somehow over the last few weeks, my relationship with my calendar began to grow distant. I’d take it with me to a meeting and would end up in a tote bag near the door. Then I’d get lazy and I wouldn’t bother to go get it when I opened my computer to check email. Or it would end up at home under a pile of stuff instead of with me when I was at the doctor’s office and needed to schedule a follow-up appointment.
Aside from the anxiety I was starting to feel, wondering when (not if!) I was going to miss something important, I realized that not keeping up with my calendar was having secondary effects. Namely, my email inbox was collecting ever more read-but-not-handled messages. And there were a few voicemails collecting digital dust.
I couldn’t reply to an evite, because I didn’t have my calendar in front of me. I didn’t know whether I could drive for a field trip, because I didn’t know if I was free. I needed to make a dentist appointment, but I was afraid I’d schedule it on top of something else.
At a certain point, even when I had my calendar next to me, I was afraid to commit to anything, because I wasn’t sure if there was something else I didn’t have written down… I couldn’t answer yes or no, so I just didn’t answer.
Emily-Sarah described this as ‘maybe purgatory’ which struck me as exactly the right term for this. I was stuck. And starting to worry what people were thinking about me for failing to respond at all.
Can you see how this might become a problem?
So this week, I finally did it. I spent some quality time with my calendar, putting all the school events, orchestra rehearsals, concerts, regular client sessions, classes, etc. etc. in my trusty book. (Yeah- I’m old school. Analog all the way!)
Fortunately, I didn’t find any major conflicts, but there were some details that had escaped me….
Not having the schedule for teacher conferences on my radar screen meant that I turned down a friend’s request to have her son come over (when it would have been fine!) and had to skip a meeting because I’d agreed to have the boys at our house on a different day (thinking I would pick them up at 3, not at 12:30)…
But really, all things considered, it could have been much worse.
After I got these things all on my calendar, I could start clearing out some of the email that had been awaiting responses. Yes to the field trip, yes to the evite, no to some other stuff…. And a whole bunch of deleting.
Both my calendar and my inbox are feeling much better for the attention. And I’m not walking around worried that I’m forgetting something, or stalling on responding to requests, making appointments, etc.
Other system failures…
This has me thinking of other ways that things start to back up and fall apart when one little part of the system isn’t happening.
The most common example in our house concerns the dishwasher. I’m trying to train everyone (myself included!) to put dishes directly in the dishwasher, not in the sink. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. But it can’t work when the dishwasher is full of clean dishes.
Until those babies get put away, the dirties will pile up in the sink. And it doesn’t take long (half a day?) for the pile in the sink to get pretty high.
And what about those unfinished projects that sit around. You can’t put it away until you finish it, but you can’t finish it without that thing-a-ma-jig you need to get at the store… And so they sit- claiming real estate on the dining table, or rec-room floor. Impeding traffic flow, and perhaps even attracting more unfinished projects to keep them company.
What to do?
I wish I had the magic bullet for this one! Alas, as evidenced by my own recent experience, I don’t. I do know that making a move to remedy the situation sooner rather than later helps. Better to handle one meal’s worth of dishes in the sink than two or three. And better a couple weeks worth of email than a month or so.
I’m curious
I’d really love to hear about where systems break down for other moms. What systems do you have in your life to keep things flowing? Where do the back-ups start and what are the side effects?
Please share in the comments!
