Walking Away from Fragmentation

My imagination is so fertile, I have to reign myself in all the time. I run the risk of fragmentation on a perpetual basis! If I cut a bunch of things out so life seems more manageable, something seems to compel me to fill it up again.

But one thing I can absolutely recognize is fragmentation in other business owners lives!  I think it may always be easier to see that in someone else than in ourselves.

One key is to fill a void – and I don’t mean that in the way it sounds! What I mean is we often consolidate, and declutter our lives, and then neglect to fill the time we just cleared with the stuff we intended to fill it with. We say we are so busy, we have so many things to do, we have to cut back. So we cut back, and instead of taking more time on the things we thought we needed more time for, we feel instead that we can just plop something else in its place!

Part of that is because sometimes we do some of the things we do for the purpose of procrastination, not accomplishment. I’d rather take on a new class, and complain that I have no time to meet both the needs of the clients and the need to prepare the curriculum, than to just focus on doing the yucky part of taking care of the jobs I already have. Not that those classes are a bad thing! They are great! But I’d rather prep curriculum than have to recode a template or troubleshoot a recalcitrant shopping cart any day!

I don’t know that the struggle to keep my tasks manageable will ever be easier. I do know that I learn as I go, and that the process of prioritizing is always a challenge – but that life is also incredibly rich and fulfilling. Feeling overwhelmed now and again seems a small price to pay!