I have found that I seem to be only able to focus on one thing at a time in my life, whether it is my passion for mountain biking, designing websites and running a freelance business or writing entries for my blog. I don’t know whether it is anything to do with the old wives tales of men being unable to multi-task but more along the lines of the way my mind works in terms of being a creative entity and a bit of a free spirit. That’s my theory anyway. I seem to get caught up in something I enjoy doing and all my passion goes into that one thing allowing everything else to just slump by the wayside. Take for instance last summer and autumn; I had rekindled the drive to throw myself down Welsh mountains pretty much every weekend on my mountain bike and cycle to work every day from Erdington to Edgbaston along the network of Birmingham canals and back again in the evening. I went into cycling hibernation over winter and have only just started to get back to commuting by it again. I have been to Wales once in the last couple of months. One factor that influenced this lack of cycling and hitting it again after winter has been that freelance work through DigiKev has been rolling in steadily soon after the initial launch. This has also had an effect on the consistency of blog posts that I began writing with.
So why is this? Surely I can do more than one thing at once if I just stop and look at what is coming in and what I want to get out of my days. I have never really been one for lists and stuff like that. I tried ‘Getting Things Done’, a bit of a self help book which has quite a cult following within productivity circles. It wasn’t for me and I easily fell of the bandwagon after a matter of weeks. I do though need to devise some kind of system that will allow me to achieve all of the goals that I want to and leave a fuller, more productive life. So this has sparked the working smarter series which not only fills my blogging void but will also help me get different ideas written down. These will of course be shared with you and I hope that you’ll give me some feedback on how you tackle your own time management and extra-curricular activities. I am not going to be following any type of pattern with these posts, they will be very much a brain dump and possibly off topic but basically ways in which I can work smarter and provide a better service.
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