Stephen Covey Would Be Proud


I'd rather not say how many projects I'm juggling now at work, because I want every one of my clients to think that they are my only focus. Which they are, during the time I am working for them; I'm not a multi-tasker as much as I am a serial single-tasker.

But I am in fact juggling a fair amount of work at work right now. For someone who is as organized and compartmentalized as I am, this can make for high stress levels. Stephen Covey would be proud of how I keep up. He is the author of the bestselling "The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People" and a bunch of offshoot books. One of his suggestions that I particularly liked was to look at your work in one-week increments, figure out for each project what was necessary to do that week, and make sure you made time to do that necessary thing, no matter what else came up.

So on Friday nights, after the kids are safely in bed, I do just that. It helps me to pace the week ahead so that I am neither needlessly scrambling (at the detriment of the quality of the work) nor hopelessly behind (at the detriment of deadlines clients have asked for work to be done by). And it brings a nice closure to the week just past, as once I have organized myself in this way I can let go and enjoy the rest of the weekend.

I'm not saying this is how it best works for others. But it seems to work for me. Now if I can just figure out a way to create an eighth day to get to everything that doesn't fit into the other seven days.

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