Quick one today. I”ve been sick all week so I haven’t even had the chance to back date my entry for last Friday. You see, Friday is blog day because I don’t have any clients on Friday. I’ve learned over the years that most people don’t want to talk about their issues on Friday afternoons. So, why bother working a half day. I can always use it to reschedule folks. But mostly I use it to do office work, schedule appointments for myself and my kids. They both do therapy mid afternoon on Fridays. It’s also morphed into laundry day for me, making beds, doing the shopping list for Saturday, and mowing the lawn. So, as you can see, it may not be the best day for me to plan of being introspective or even to just plain have the time to sit down and write something halfway decent.
If you system doesn’t work… Change it.
If you’ve noticed over the past month or so since shortly after I got back on the blog horse, so to speak, that I’ve been less than consistent about my Friday posts. Oh, I’ll back date them so it looks like I posted on Friday. But you’ll get the email when I actually write it, which has likely been the following Tuesday or Wednesday.
Here’s where the wisdom come in. I’ve been doing this coaching thing long enough for other and for myself that I noticed this pattern and asked myself a question. I asked why I still have it on my calendar to post on Fridays if that doesn’t seem like a realistic goal right now? I challenged my assumptions. I challenged a structure that had worked for many years in the past. I didn’t allow that structure to become a sacred cow. It took me a few weeks to notice the pattern. I don’t want to be changing Willy Nilly. But I’m always evaluating the productivity of my systems, even the smallest detail.
In this case. Having a reminder on my calendar works. Putting the blog post on to my to do list once the reminder pops up is working. It gets done eventually. But the small detail of the reminder being on Friday morning wasn’t ideal. I don’t really let myself feel too guilty about stuff, and I get important things done eventually. But I didn’t like having the blog hanging over me for four of five days. I didn’t like that I was now closer to the next reminder than I was to the last one when I finally had time to post.
So, I”m posting to day on Thursday because I’ve been sick all week to make up for last week but I’m only going to back date it to Tuesday of this week as that corresponds to my new Tuesday reminder to post and entry after my 9am client. And, I’m writing off last week’s entry to my being sick this week.
I have a system for just about everything. But, they are not static. They are the ultimate combination of solid and fluid. They are set in stone as long as I need them to be. And, when they need to be reexamined, shifted, reshaped, changed, retooled, adjusted, tweaked, or abandoned for something better, so be it. It is an iterative process. Give yourself the power to make those systems and to change them.