Efficiency

It's hard to get to a place where you can finally see the bottom of the pile of things you have to accomplish in order to feel... accomplished.

Given that neither my sweet man nor I have conventional career paths (whatever that means anymore), we've always had to juggle work life with dream life. In Bren's case, that meant taking a mindless production job (less said the better) that sucked a lot of his creative and physical energy away from his acting life. It's a testimony to Bren's strength of will though that he managed to book a commercial, perform weekly at the Hothouse and write/direct/shoot as many shorts as he did in that time. I'm sure it's something you all can understand, even if your work life IS your dream. There's always something else you'd rather be doing, whether it's hanging out with your family, or baking or making your way through the NEA's Top 100 books (yippee the Faraway Tree series: my favourite!!!).

In any case, we were floundering under a sea of to-do lists, vision boards, google calendars, filofaxes, idea-filled spiral notebooks, untouched moleskins... and still not getting closer to our dreams, until... TA-DAAAA!



Our dear friend Elena swept in and announced, "I'm getting my sh*t together."

Elena, at the suggestion of her highly-organized friend Nina, is following the strategies of Stephen Covey's "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People", a book whose title used to scare me out of the store: that's a lot of pressure! But now, under the careful guidance of Elena, I am starting to see that this is exactly what I need.

Elena, our other absurdly-talented friend Karen, Bren and I meet once a week, and collectively, get our sh*t together. First, we each had to declare our different roles, and then long- and short-term goals for each of those roles... a daunting, daring exercise in itself.

Then we have to think of ways we can actively propel ourselves toward achieving those short-term goals over the next three months, and plug them into our calendars.



Bren and I even bought ourselves spiffy calendars! We put our one-week version up on the fridge. This is mine.



Bren has been very busy, and true to form, has pretty much ticked off everything on his list for Monday. I, on the other hand, am sort of behind.



However, one of my goals is to BLOG everyday. So expect to see more of me on here. I can't promise award-winning stuff on here everyday, but at least I'll be flexing my writing muscle as I begin to embrace myself as a, gulp, writer.

I'll let you know how our efficient lives go! I can't say that I'm seeing the bottom of the "accomplished" pile yet, but I have a better sense of what the pile looks like now. Thankyou Elena!



-x-
aarti