Re: Organization and Time Management HELP!

[Anonymous]

idoeno, shopping is a much better experience. I can listen to the voice of reason more clearly and feel in control (in the past, the lack of control would send me running whenever a salesperson came near me). The past week I went grocery shopping (alone), clothes shopping (with my husband) and even bought a new sewing machine (I broke the old one because I never found time to schedule a maintenance checkup).

powcat, I am still struggling with scheduling. I have WAY too many things on my to-do list and cannot make it shorter as my therapist suggests (he said put only 3-5 things on the list and stop after each one and decide what I want to do next). I did try making a short REALLY IMPORTANT TO-DO list, but didn’t trust it and still make little lists for each day. I too find a big schedule overwhelming. I did very poorly when I first went away to university. Later in life, I successfully completed a professional accounting designation, but only because I found the ability to hyperfocus and completely ignored family, friends and hobbies for about 8 years. My joking comment was that nobody in my family was allowed to get married, give birth, get sick, or die. I worked 40 hours a week at work and 20-30 hours a week on studies.

When I was working as a professional accountant (I worked for a big Japanese auto firm in their trading wing), and had important deadlines that could not be negotiated, I had a checklist of what had to be done and when. I made it up in Excel. There was a column for the task and its description, what files I had to find on the computer to prepare, what steps had to be completed before I could start a particular task, when the task was due and who it was reporting to. That was really helpful as it kept me on track, it was impossible to do something that I liked, or was easier or quicker because every single item on the list was in a specific sequence.

I had a regular monthly schedule (to prepare financial reports for month end), a quarterly schedule (even more reports at month end) and an annual schedule (for year end and the year end audit). Since we reported up to a US parent and then ultimately to a Japanese parent, the deadlines were very tight and got tighter every year.

To avoid distractions, I worked after hours when everyone else had gone home (working my regular hours too, so 14 hour days), and to save time by not having to drive back and forth (1/2 hour each way), I got the company to pay for a hotel room for me nearby so I had a place that was close to crash and relax (it had a great swimming pool, hot tub and games arcade). My husband came to visit me there and stayed over on the last night and we had a lot of fun in the games arcade!

The best part of working for that company was the rush I got from working in a high stakes environment, lots of foreign exchange trading, high volumes, a Japanese culture that rewarded my hyperfocus, etc.

The worst part of working for that company was that I worked in an open office, cubicles were arranged in a “bullpen” fashion, all facing out, terrible noise from my coworkers (I don’t function well with noise behind me) and ultimately I think that’s why I left. That and a Japanese president who wanted zero foreign exchange loss or gain (an impossibility). And I was a terrible person manager, when I started I didn’t have any staff reporting to me but that changed as we rapidly grew. I can’t manage myself so it was a complete disaster trying to manage others. I also had the tendency to do most of the important stuff myself as I found it hard to give it up if it was appealing and I had trouble getting others to do it exactly the way I wanted it to be done.

Long post, sorry! hope it is helpful.

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