Looking back on my last post, summarising my 168-hour week, to be honest I wasn't really surprised. It just confirmed a lot of things I'd already known about the way I spend my time. I should point out that it's my non-work time I'm talking about here. I don't want to quit my job (I'm happy doing what I do, which I'll explain more below). I can't do anything about how long it takes me to get to work right now, so it's all the other hours, the ones in which I can do whatever I please, that I'll look at. Viz -
I REALLY SHOULD -
* spend less time on the internet and playing ipod games - it would be nice to spend some of this time acting on the things that have inspired me instead of taking in more and more until I'm overwhelmed and end up not doing anything creative.
* spend more time doing housework - this is the thing I hate doing the most, so it's very hard to be motivated. Crazy Aunt Purl mentioned in her blog recently a system of doing things in 20-minute blocks which works for her. I think I'll check it out.
* spend more time exercising - I actually enjoy exercising, so I don't feel like it'll be a huge drag to increase it. I've already been thinking about ways I can do more.
I'D REALLY LIKE TO -
* spend more time reading - I enjoy reading so much, and I was sad to see I only did 4 hours in the target week. That was actually even more than normal because I spent a few of my lunch times reading instead of going on the internet. I want to get back my reputation as a voracious reader!
* spend more time creating - as mentioned above, convert some of that inspiration into concrete creations (not actual concrete, ahahhaha). There are certain things I'd like to concentrate on more, but I won't go into that now.
MY CORE COMPETENCIES
The next activity in the book is to figure out your core competencies. This is a business term, but in this context it's applied to anything in your life. The task is to look through your week and list 3-5 things that you really enjoy doing and/or are really good at doing. Activities (whether at work or home) when you felt your time was being well-spent. So here are mine:
1) being creative - craft, art, writing; being inspired; working with colour.
2) being anal (that's what I wrote in my notes, so I'm putting it here) - organising, sorting and categorising; following procedures accurately; attention to detail; putting things in order; lining things up.
3) learning - natural curiosity; following up leads; analysing; input.
4) writing - being informative; being entertaining (hopefully!); synthesising; output.
5) being enthusiastic - childlike wonder; finding the positives in things; supporting other people's passions and creative ideas.
The next section invites you to analyse whether your job aligns with your core competencies. Very few people are lucky or bold enough to be in their dream job, but if your job (or the majority of tasks in it) falls in with your your CCs, then you will probably be happy, or at least content. So I had a think about it.
It didn't take me long to realise ... my job does pass the CC test. I've often thought that Records Management is the job for me. It satisfies CC No. 2 very well. I can sort, categorise and process things to my heart's content, all day long. This is a person after all, who will spend hours of her leisure time sorting Hama beads into their different colours (the range of pesky flesh-coloured, almost-the-same-colour ones are the most satisfying!). A person who, when drawing up a list of 1,001 things to do before she died, decided it needed to be in Dewy Decimal order to prevent any double-ups (that took well over six months and I nearly gave up a few times, but I was so, so proud when I finished!). A person who is currently cataloguing her zine collection and is confident she's included all the fields she wants to capture. A person who still feels proud every time she walks past that bay of files she spent 2 days organising, even though it was a couple of months ago now. Yup, I'm kinda anal. And dang it, I'm good at it!
My job also satisfies CC No. 3 at times, and CC No. 5 occasionally. CC No. 4 comes into it quite a lot. Semi-regularly I'm called on to write summaries, cheatsheets and work on the procedures manual. Many people groan when they hear the words, "I want you to write a procedures manual"; I think "yay, I get to do some writing!"
Not only that, but I'm doing all of the above for an organisation that helps people. It's really satisfying.
