Organizing My Life

What do I do today?

This is not an idle question. Working out of my home for two not-for-profits that I care about, plus running a small garden design business, I’ve created a time-management monster. I’m way too busy, and competing agendas pull at me constantly. There’s always something I should be attending to, always something I may have forgotten to take care of. The free-floating anxiety makes me crazy.

I’m working out a system to cope with this, and it’s been working: I designate each day of the week for a different focus. Here’s how it works.

·         Monday is INPAWS Day. That’s my state’s native plant society, of which I’m the volunteer membership chair and communications officer. On Mondays I write press releases, deal with a 560+ member family database, update the website, share news with our Facebook page and group, and answer INPAWS emails. I have to focus, otherwise INPAWS Day can stretch into INPAWS Week, there’s so much to do.

·         Tuesday is Landscape Fancies Day. That’s my garden design business. In season, I start the day with a team of Master Gardener friends, maintaining gardens at the public school where I volunteer (see Thursday). In the afternoon I work on designs for my clients, prepare presentations, develop quotes, source plants, assemble teams to install gardens, make up invoices, and do all the necessary paperwork to file my retail taxes and Schedule C. I’m trying to retire so I can focus on several dear-to-my-heart pro bono projects that I manage. But designing gardens is what I really love to do, so I’m torn every time a potential project comes up. Requests from friends, past clients, and people interested in native plants are hard to turn down.

·         Wednesday is my Personal Day. I schedule doctor’s appointments, do laundry, take care of the house and personal business, get my hair cut, etc. Truth be told, Wednesday is sometimes a continuation of INPAWS Day or Landscape Fancies Day, but I try not to let that happen.

·         Thursday is Friends of Cold Spring School Day. I’m a founding member and officer of the Friends, supporting our city’s only environmental studies magnet school, K-6, which draws from all around the inner city. My job is to facilitate partnerships with community organizations whose members have a passion for nature. I maintain the Friends website and Facebook page, plan and maintain demonstration gardens, engage with the principal and teachers and PTO leader and social worker, involve students in planting and weeding projects, organize meetings of our board and advisory council, and lend my knowledge of native plants as needed. Sometimes I just enjoy standing in the halls watching the children move between classes. They’re adorable, and I get an occasional hug.

·         Friday is Family & Friends Day. When Mom was alive, this was the day I took care of business as her point person with the nursing home staff. Now I’m using the day to get our family finances in order, which is sorely needed, and to pay the bills, which always seem to be in arrears. I also try to stay in touch with and plan things for the family and with friends.

·         Weekends are up for grabs. In gardening season, I work in my yard for hours on end. In winter, I try to declutter the house or process the boxes of family photos into a usable form. Once a month, my Sunday evenings end with a frenzied attempt to tidy for the cleaning ladies who come first thing Monday.

Is this day-based system working for me? Yes, pretty well, and here’s why: (1) If I don’t finish the list of things I had in my Day Planner for a particular day, I know I’ll be coming back around to those tasks in a week. I don’t need to feel guilty about not finishing everything. (2) I give the things I value a full day of focus. There’s time to think about what needs to be done in each area of responsibility, which eases the anxiety of possibly forgetting to do something or of neglecting things (especially people!) that are important.

Sometimes my system gets blown up, like when I’m doing the taxes at the last minute per usual. Other times it feels like a straightjacket because I’d rather spend a sunny weekday just puttering in the garden. But the system has served me well for the past couple of years, considering that I’ve taken on way too much and can’t easily extricate myself.

I contemplate a time when I’ll wake up in the morning and just let the day unfold as it will. To get there, I’ll have to jettison a lot of the above-mentioned responsibilities. But maybe not having an agenda to keep me focused will just make me anxious.

I’ll let you know how it works out.