Monday 1st March 2021

The beginning of the month is my time to follow up about a bunch of things.  Typically, when I have something I’m waiting on, I create a task in the future to ask the question of whether I’ve heard back.  That way, I can ensure that I don’t forget about things.  If things have moved on in the meantime, I can quickly tick off the task as complete.  If I haven’t I can take an action to follow up.

What I’ve realised doing this exercise today is that there’s a lot of things across all manner of activities that I’m waiting to hear back about.  There’s some I’m eager for movement, others that will be done when they’re done, but all deserved a follow up.

It got me thinking as to whether I have too much on the go.  Yes, to a certain degree, I need to keep busy during lockdown and having a lot on the boil is good.  But as the world quietens down, so I want to have a bit more focus.  I feel like I’m bouncing from task to task right now.

It’s possible that all these things will happen at the same time – fate has a way of doing this – or that with the current lockdown, more focus just isn’t possible.  But I did find myself asking why I was doing all these things other than the simple answer of just keeping busy during the pandemic.

At the same time, I’m aware that I have a backlog of tasks and if I break the back of them over the next few weeks, then I’m going to be in a position where tasks are complete or waiting on other people and I’m going to be able to focus more on certain things.

But of course, those items I am following up on – the ones sitting in my ToDo list with “has X happened?” as their title, might come back, move forward and generate a bunch more tasks.

Perhaps that’s why I’ve been so keen to follow up today.  Not because I’m chasing specific answers but so I can know what my workload is going to look like in the months to come.  Can those tasks I’m inching forwards continue to take their merry time or do I really need to clear them off quickly to make room for new tasks as various projects move forwards?  Maybe if I know a bit more what my next 3 -6 months looks like, then I can plan efficiently.

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