The Free Time I Don't Have

School drop off rush, checking email in the Starbucks drive thru line, taking a call on the way home, scheduling a pediatrician appointment between sorting through the back-to-school madness scattered across the counter, replacing the summer clothes in three closets with pants and sweaters, ordering new shoes for 6 little feet, and before I know it, heading back to school for pick up… WAIT… what’s happening here??

It’s been a few weeks now since I’ve been on the clock and the biggest shock of all is how much free time I do NOT have. I had imagined leisurely days starting with waking up refreshed, making nutritious breakfasts for the boys, planning elaborate activities, working out, reading books, and dare I say – taking naps! But the reality is that I am busier than ever. How could that possibly be the case?

And then I realized. The workload was too much. I hadn’t been exaggerating or poorly allocating my time while working fulltime. The body of work was simply too high for one person. I’d been jamming my career and everything that went along with it + being a wife + being a mom into a schedule that wasn’t large enough to accommodate it all.

In the Resource Management profession, when a team member is overbooked or requested in more than one place at the same time, we call this a conflict. And a conflict is not acceptable – it is something that must be solved BEFORE the time comes so that person is treated fairly, positioned for success, and so that clients get what they need. Not doing this would jeopardize the quality of the work being completed and would certainly have an impact on morale.

It is interesting then, that I had been running so fast, so hard, for so long - solutioning these issues for others while not seeing the one that was right in front of me – ME. I’d venture to say, when viewing this strictly from a business perspective – Was it fair to do that to myself? Had I been positioned for success? Were my clients (my family) getting what they needed? Across the board the answer was no. And how do you think my morale was doing? Oof.

I’d like to say I saw this coming. After all, a telltale sign of a strong Resource Management process is accurate forecasting. But just as navigating a volatile market takes a combination of intuition and data, I made the decision to take my “intermission” based on what felt right, not information from a report. What I’ve now discovered is that for the sake of my own mental health, my family, and my future career aspirations, I will need to make changes in order to position myself for success. The principles of Resource Management have never failed me, so I will draw upon them again as I design a framework for assessing my new workload, plotting out the resources needed to tackle it, and make real-time adjustments to keep things running smoothly.

Very PINTERESTING.