For anyone who is a Mac user you will appreciate what I’m talking about here, if you are a windows user I think this might be an egg timer.
When you start to ask your computer to do too much or the memory is not good enough or it’s not fast enough, on a Mac you get the colour wheel.
When you open too many programmes at once and then begin to click, click, click the colour wheel comes and you get completely disabled, unable to do anything, the computer just cannot cope.
Sometimes, at times like this the only thing you can do is a complete Reboot, start again and go back to one programme at a time.
Last week was a bit like that until I reached the colour wheel on Friday.
Hit after hit after hit, friends with personal tragedies in their life, other friends with real difficulties with work, professional stuff (responding to a GDC complaint) and then everything related to the circumstances we find ourselves in with COVID-19.
I found myself on three webinars on Tuesday talking about the future of Dentistry and I was 'colour wheeling' all the way through.
The problem with personal ‘colour wheeling’ is that you can’t do any task and certainly no task well.
You can only ‘eat the elephant’ one bite at a time but when you start to 'colour wheel' you start to try to swallow it whole.
Learning the skill to compartmentalise to step back or to take advice from trusted others, is about the only way that I know how to survive.
Step back on Thursday night, shut down entirely on Friday, did a family quiz on Zoom on Friday night (drank three beers) woke up with post beer paranoia on Saturday and then felt much better and was able to order the tasks that I felt were the most important in a neat line and try to block them off starting first thing Monday morning.
Don’t be ashamed if you’re ‘colour wheeling’ and don’t be ashamed if it’s coming off, it’s pretty much the same for almost everybody regardless of the circumstances at the moment.
Blog Post Number - 2362
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