Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Time Management

Sometimes I feel so restless, drowning in the sea of tasks. Mountains load of work in the same time frame. I know that we have to manage time appropriately and I am all for it. Sometimes I even pass comments that all the knowledge, advices and information about time management are all logic enough to have been thought by us. We do not really have to get them from others. It is logic enough, plain and simple that we have to manage our time properly.

Yet I failed to do just that. But I do not blame myself rather the situation itself. I do not procrastinate so the workload piling up is out of the question. I try my level best to manage my time so I don't waste it on unnecessary things. I organize my tasks and set priorities to them. I am a considerate person and helpful (well, at least I see myself as such) and therefore I do not think people would turn to me to run their errands. But tasks do come pouring in despite all the things I've said just now. Then what seems to be the problem?

I think the answer lies with other factors like the situation, the people, the organization the task itself. Sometimes it just so happen that someting needs to be done when you have just step into the office, or you just so happen to be the right person at the wrong time or the wrong person at the wrong time, or the wrong person at the right time, as a matter of fact. There could not be a right person at the right time, because when it involves credit and recognition, there bound to be your superiors having a go at it.

Sometimes the answer is in the people. No matter how hard you try to be friendly with everybody, and safe from harms way, there tends to be people who could simply pick you for some chores or tasks. This could be either out of something bad or nothing at all. They simply want you to do something or they pick you to get even on something. All this while you have been at your level best to play safe avoiding any confrontation. But you still got picked. Worst case scenario, your friends choose you in the name of help.

There are also politics in any organization. If the management decides to do something and it works, they get the credit but if it fails, the people running it get the scolding. The management have a lot of ad hoc works on top of the actual ones. Paying attention to these ad hoc works stray you away from your actual job. The management want you to be flexible, and adaptive to the environment on the grounds of fluidity. If you fail to balance both, you face the firing squad. How can that be? The people who preach of time management and priority fail to practice the very same thing that they preach. The irony of things.

At other times task itself could simply find its way to you. You are the one that the management can think of that suit the task in hand. No other people could outdo you in performing the job. You are the saviour of the management and the organization. All those craps are laid out to you so that you would buy them, complete the job, and they can get back to their ordinary lives again. Then again you do not get the credit you deserve and things would go like as if nothing happen. Their life-or-death dependency on you seems to fade and everybody lives again.

I am in the middle of a workshop, at the same time preparing my materials for my class as well as preparing the materials for the new course in the soon coming semester, preparation to move into a new house, trying to sell the old house and other important stuff. I have to balance this together with the day-to-day job at the office. One thing I know is that I have to uptake all these as challenges and in the end I have to appear triumphant.
Viva