These days, the first Monday of every month is scheduled as a content day for me (unless there's a bank holiday).
I need to produce various things on that day (or that week), like the newsletter we send to our patients and the newsletter we send to referring dentists, an update to my boss in the ITI, and lots of other senior leadership-type things that happen monthly.
And so, I set aside time at home and make a list of the things I need to do.
The problem is that, if you're like me, the targets I set to achieve on that day are completely arbitrary.
I can pretend I time-limit parts of them, but today, I had to complete a set of minutes for our senior leadership team meeting from last week (Marie was on holiday), and it took me way, way longer to do it the way I wanted than I imagined chopping right into the day.
There were some things that took less time, but other things that took more. The thing about arbitrary targets is that we imagine when we set our list at the start of the day that if we don't finish it, we have failed.
So, I reached the end of the day having worked really, really hard (albeit on the couch with my sausage dog on my knee), including a Zoom meeting with Switzerland and various other things, yet feeling like I've not really achieved very much.
It's important to understand that although we set these targets, things that we need to achieve, lists that need to be completed, and projects that need to be done, it doesn't matter really if we don't finish them, we'll get to them tomorrow or the day after.
For ages, I had a period where I was worried if I hadn't done anything on a Sunday afternoon to 'set myself up for the week' that, I would have failed.
I managed to get over that ages ago.
It doesn't matter.
The key here is to keep on going 1 foot in front of the other, step by step by step, day after day, fighting the good fight carrying on in a good direction.
When you look back over a much longer period of time, you realise that the targets were arbitrary, and it doesn't matter because you've moved in the right direction quite a long way.
Blog Post Number - 3918
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