Rearranging my time
I’m a busy lady. Between running my business from home, employing 5 people, co-ordinating with contractors, trying to keep up with new technologies, managing projects, raising 2 teenage boys, looking after the house and trying to squeeze in an hour or two of leisure time each week, I am completely swamped!
Sometimes I wish I could clone myself …
Anyway, I can’t actually carry on like this or I’m going to burn out again.
I REALLY don’t want to let stress immobilize me again so I need to make some changes in my schedule in order to free up more time for myself.
At the moment, one of the most important things I have to do on the work-front is catch up on new technologies. For various personal reasons, I have managed to fall behind in this area. I am probably about 2 years behind the game, which in terms of the fast-paced web industry, is a lifetime. So, what I absolutely HAVE to do is spend a decent amount of time researching stuff that I am not yet totally familiar with and train myself to the point where I am comfortable in applying new technology and confident that I can successfully implement it on both my own and Clients’ websites.
This is critical for me – my business is my lifeline. I rely on it 100% to earn a living and if I’m not on top of my game, like I was a few years ago, I am going whither and die! Getting stuck in old technology is seriously a death wish for any web company.
In order to do this, I have decided to only work a 4-day week. I got this idea from a post by Christopher Mills on his (very cool) iMod site, where he puts forward the concept of allowing web developers to only work for 4 days of the week: Hiring PHP developers outside the box. Ok, he writes in the context of securing a much sought-after PHP developer and providing a great incentive … that’s not what I’m thinking (obviously) … but what I am thinking is that if I can reach my work goals in 4 days (which is totally possible), then I can devote one day per week to training myself.
It would work for me. Because I work from home, I have lots of additional distractions that eat into my day so if I can setup a structured time to do my training during the hours that the kids are at school, and let my team know that I am NOT to be disturbed during that time, then I can do it. I can start making some decent progress instead of trying to fit in a few minutes here and there, which is definitely NOT working for me. I feel like I’m getting no-where fast. And feeling stuck really sucks, it’s not good for me in any way.
So, that’s my plan! It’s at times like this that I am SO glad I don’t work for anyone else =)
And with that, I now have to run off and fetch Son#2 from school …. Later.
“If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn’t seem wonderful at all!” —Michelangelo