Day 345: Wrapping up the year by digging out

It has been a long and tiring year. I am pretty burned out right now, and have far too much on my plate right now. I am really really looking forward to some time off. Typically, this time of year is spent clearing away the chaff from this year and beginning planning for next year - what goals and objectives should we focus on... how will we measure ourselves... what will success look like. Things like that. But instead I find myself buried under a ton of things - small, medium and large. Complicated and simple. It's a work-alanche. 

Usually I point to my Covey's Quadrants to help me out here - but there really is a lot of change going on and it's challenging to keep up with the regular station programming and the new sitcoms.

Work needs a PVR.

Wait - no - let me correct that. 

Meetings need a PVR.

Imagine! You could fast forward through the first 5 minutes when that guy who always shows up late (wait for it) shows up late and asks "what did I miss?" And the next 3 minutes bringing him up to speed. You could whiz right through that lady's presentation since she reads every bullet point verbatim - heck, you can read right? Then those pesky extra 10 minutes when the meeting agenda has been covered but someone says "We've still got 10 minutes - what should we discuss now?"

I wish I could skip some of those wasted minutes and reclaim them for other purposes. But that's the funny thing about time - once it's gone, it's gone for good. I guess the trick is to make sure they are spent as wisely as possible.

I still have 3.5 work days left this year, and hopefully they will get me closer to starting with a clean slate for 2015. Until then, I will continue to try to escape the work-alanche the same way you try to escape a (real) avalanche:

Hold your breath and just keep swimming.

AMac