Blog 2 2010 - Just Say No!
Blog 13th January 2010
Well, we’ve gone in Galway from severe flooding in December to a water shortage in January! Talk about extreme weather. Podge, my goldfish, was found floating in the garden pond yesterday morning, so I laid him to rest in the compost bin. I think he froze to death. Maybe we could rename him Donegal Catch! Maybe we will have a heat wave next? That would be nice!
But back to the subject of my new year’s resolutions. One of them is to go to bed by 10.30pm and be up early so that I can start work on time, and be more rested. So far I have managed to keep to them fairly well, but yesterday I found myself very stressed out again. I didn’t go to bed until 11.30pm the previous night, then the baby had me up for an hour during the night, and up again at 6am, and then we fell into a deep sleep, so I was late getting up for work, and was feeling very behind and hassled before I even started the day. Then I had a call with Nepal where I was being dragged into a load of minutae of accounting reconciliations etc, which had me totally stressed out, as I had planned my day to work on other things, and suddenly I was being sucked in to sort out a load of crap out there. Seeing my day going pear shaped, with the pile of work growing visibly in front of me, I could feel my blood pressure and stress levels rising.
But I was reading the Sunday Times magazine on Sunday evening, and there was a piece on it by a lady who specialises in yoga on the run, and one technique is to ask yourself the following questions – ‘Who am I? Me. Where am I? Here. What time is it? Now.’ Silly as it sounds, it helps you to get back into the here and now, and stop thinking ahead / getting stressed out, so I repeated that mantra a few times, and took some deep breaths, before telling Nirmala in Nepal that this is not my area, and she has to sort this stuff out herself with an accountant out there, and come to me with the answer, instead of dragging me into the nitty gritty, and getting me to do it. I have decided that I cannot get involved in this kind of stuff any more – where before I would have jumped in to try to sort things out for my staff, both in Ireland and Nepal, now I can see that this is where my day goes wrong, and the bottom line then is that I don’t get time to get out and meet people, and do fundraising. Their work gets done, with my help, but my work doesn’t! So then I end up working all kinds of crazy hours trying to catch up.
This was also brought home to me this week, when I met a guy I know for coffee. We had said we would meet up several times over the last year or two, but it took until last Monday before I had time to actually meet him, which is ridiculous when I think about it. He offered to do a big fundraising event for us this year with some friends, which will really help us financially. What a good use of my time it was, to meet him, instead of crunching numbers for Nirmala!
So this year, I plan to control my time better and to simply say no. I have a bad tendency to respond to calls for help, but I realise that when you tell people to get on with it themselves, they will find a solution. It’s good for them, and is empowering. Then I get time to meet people and fundraise, and most importantly, I get head space and feel on top of my end of things, instead of another week going by, and all my time being sucked into sorting out other people’s problems, and the pile of work on my desk getting higher and higher! When I feel on top of things, my stress levels drop, my form improves, my smile returns, I sleep better at night, and my baby senses the difference and is in much better form, so everyone is a winner! My thought for the week then is: Delegate, and just say ‘no’!
Lots of love
Nicky
