Jack of all trades, master of none? More like Jill of all trades, master of some.
There’s no doubt about it, I’m juggling a lot of things lately. No two days are ever the same around here. But being busy and being challenged are two of my favorite things so it’s all good.
Case in point, on June 1 I woke up and realized our family trip to Japan to celebrate Enagic’s 40th anniversary was just a few short weeks away. That thought put the fear of God into me — so much to do, so little time. I’m a fan of list making — there’s nothing more satisfying than checking off something you’ve completed on your to-do list — so I got on the computer and put together a list of the top 166 things I wanted to accomplish before we left. (Actually it started closer to 180 but unless there was some way to squeeze 40 hours into a 24-day, there was no way in heck I’d ever complete them all and in the whole scheme of life, not everything was that important anyhow.)
I’ve made more lists than I can count through the years but I did something with this list that made it the most effective one yet. I prioritized it so the most important things were at the top of the list. Every time I started a project on the list, it was highlighted in yellow, when the project was completed, the highlight color was changed to lime green.
The results? Pretty darn good, if I do say so myself. Seventeen days into this, 133 items are done, 19 are in progress and 13 haven’t been attempted yet. If I wrapped this up today and didn’t complete one more thing, I’d still say it was a success.
Here’s some of the things that made it to the finished list… write four stories for The Business News, do five Kangen water demos, write two stories for The Compass, take several photos to go along with my stories, create four ads/flyers, contact, connect and follow up with dozens of people, add new contacts to my e-mail list, set up interviews for July, invite folks to my upcoming water demos, do four exit interviews with the students from Burundi who are attending school in the U.S. and heading home for the summer, do a home visit with a family who will be hosting a student from Burundi this fall (part of my work on the board of The Burundi Education Fund), send in seven orders for Enagic water ionizers, buy yen for the trip, update our budget on Microsoft Money, type notes from the three books I recently finished, update the computer, go through my daughter’s things from college and donate items to charity and bring things to the resale shop, pick up trash in the neighborhood, run two outdoor 5Ks to prepare for our next race on July 4, put in five afternoons of work in the research and development department a local paper product company, and proofread a 329-page course manual for a private college in my area.
Now that I finished writing this post, I can check that off my list. I may spend the 14-hour plane ride from LAX to Japan sleeping. Either that or starting my list of things to do in the month of July…