DIY Project - From Despair to Good Times

How is it that once a project is begun, the world comes crashing in?  Kat and I know to allot more time than we think is needed for any house project. We started the minor renovation of my sewing / guest room with a hard deadline of March 10, the date of the arrival of my sister and nieces for Spring Break. We had two mostly empty weekends to work with, and figured the project would take only one of those weekends with the cracks filled in during the week.

I’m sure you can guess the rest of the story.

On Saturday the ninth, we were frantically finishing up the room while trying to clean, shop for groceries, prep for meals, and all the other things that go with getting ready for guests. We made it, barely.

The unexpected problems that cropped up were, first, my getting a nasty cold and passing it on to Kat. We worked through it, but fatigue was definitely a factor. Then Kat was assigned a trainee at work, which meant much longer hours, and this on top of battling a cold virus. Then I had some issues pop up with volunteer work that needed attention. I fell into that middle-of-project funk when I despair that we’re improving anything and wonder why we made so much seemingly unnecessary work for ourselves.

But in the end we finished just in time for guests to enjoy (very satisfying!!) Today guests have gone home, and I need to clean before I take “after” pictures. I’ll be back soon to show off the project. I am VERY pleased with how it turned out.

Despair is gone, and now time to enjoy, and try hard to ward off the itch to tackle some other project anytime soon.

Blowing Deadlines and Re-Scripting Failure

Spread before me right now are all my tools for working toward goals and organizing time. These tools go from the general to the specific -- personal mission statement, 2013 resolutions, and project pages. Project pages are what I live from. I check them every morning to orient myself. In them I list the areas of my life that require attention -- writing, volunteer commitments, household, finances, quilting, relationships, health -- and for each area I have columns for goals, tasks (a catch-all to-do list), and next step(s). Having just one or two tasks per area in the next step column makes juggling everything so much more manageable.

But here's the thing.

My project pages are full of missed deadlines. Dates crossed out, sometimes multiple times, for a project or next step. I used to be down on myself for this seeming inability to keep self-made deadlines -- especially as I am obsessive about meeting any deadline set for me by someone else. I can see the likes of Stephen Covey and Tony Robbins shaking their heads and thinking that success is not likely here; one must be accountable to oneself, or at least find a buddy to aid accountability. And while there's truth in that, I've come to realize something important.

For years I've badgered myself about blown deadlines, and my inner nag had just about convinced me that I could not perform work that is self-directed, that I needed a boss to set external goals and deadlines. Yet if I look back over the last several years, I managed to write three novels -- revising each mulitple times -- start a blog, complete five quilts, maintain a clutter-free home full of heatlhy pets, contribute a lot to volunteer efforts, keep up with friends and family, and make a mildly successful stab at a different career before deciding it wasn't for me. Not bad for suffering from nagging doubts that I can't be successful because I fail at keeping self-imposed deadlines.

Somehow my methods work (for the most part), and it occurred to me that my goal-setting and project planning are my way of plotting my life. In the writing world, we speak of plotters vs pantsers, or those who create character charts and plot outlines before writing the narrative (Elizabeth George), verses those who enter the world of a character and write the narrative by the seat of their pants (Stephen King). Many of us fall on the spectrum between those two positions. I am a plotter, but often I diverge from my carefully outlined plot and go off by the seat of my pants until I get so tangled I need to stop and readjust the outline. I do this over and over.

So I plot my life with goals and tasks and target deadlines. This works for a while until interests and circumstances intrude, and off I go. Then I get bogged down and disoriented, and back I go to my mission statement and project pages, crossing out and readjusting and moving forward with a plan for a while. Messy, messy, but it works and I'm done trying to change myself or measure myself against the plot outline, declaring myself a failure for not having stuck with it. If I am not managing to accomplish some of my objectives, then I'll figure out why and re-write the goal and/or tasks related to the goal. No failure there, and so simple. My inner nag will have to find something else to yammer about.