Managing Energy and Establishing Priorities for Time Management

This was my first week taking on the job of two people. I learned something surprising about myself: I become hyper-active when faced with too much to do. And being a task-oriented person, I can easily become insensitive to the needs of others when I become hyper-focused on my “to do” list. I realized that was happening on Monday morning when by 11 a.m., I hadn’t even said, “Good morning” to my co-workers. It took an unexpected encounter with a colleague in the mail room to help me begin the process of time management.

As I mentioned last week, there are a lot of changes happening at work. My new boss has a lot on her plate. She also brings plenty of new ideas to our newly formed department that she wants implemented quickly. I appreciate the ideas and I am content doing my part to help implement them and I even enjoy it. But this week, I was handed nearly all the duties that had been the responsibility of my colleague who went on leave. My initial response was “Wow, this a lot of extra work for one person to take on”. My second response was, “Okay, I love a challenge”.

And then my inbox blew up with demands coming in fast and furious from all over the place. The problem was that there with no sense of what was urgent. Every request seemed to be on the same high level of priority. And some people are impatient by nature, including me. So, I started to take it all on at once. Admittedly, the sense of accomplishment was invigorating. I felt my energy level go into this hyper-active “gotta get it all done” mentality. I was on a roll but I was also difficult to deal with on a personal level. I stopped chit-chatting with colleagues, instead focusing only on what I needed from them to accomplish a task. I realized Tuesday morning that I didn’t even greet people when I came into work for the second day, heading straight for my office to dive in.

Thankfully, I had to walk across campus to the mail room Tuesday morning. It was there that I ran into a colleague known for his caring attitude towards people. He knew about the changes in our office and about my situation and insisted on showing me the item he had purchased from Amazon that he was going to use on his desk to help calm students. I think he could sense my uncomfortably high energy level.

He demonstrated the power of this spinning desk toy. If you turn it one way, it brings your energy level up. Turn it the opposite way and it calms you. It had an immediate affect on me and he volunteered to send me the link so I could purchase one myself. But being the kind and thoughtful person he is, he later showed up in my office and presented his to me as a gift, saying he would simply order another for himself. That’s kindness.

The ball calmed me down immediately. In fact, it helped me to relax enough to be able to put my inbox into perspective so that I could set priorities for what was immediate and what could actually wait. I asked for some requested items to be wait-listed until other things were accomplished. I took my time with people instead of rushing them out the door. And I took a full hour for lunch. I greeted my colleagues and started treating them like human beings again.

Yes, there is a whole lot to do and I’m lucky that I am passionate about completing each item on my “to do” list. But striking a balance between getting things done and caring for people is important for the kind of work I do. In reality, this balance is good for all of us as human beings working and living together. While it is true that the things that need to be done are in service to people, I’m reminded by a quote by Maya Angelou: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Managing my energy allows me to manage my priorities and my time so that I can make room for the humans I care about. For me, help was found through a chance encounter with a caring colleague who made time for me and the ingenuity of a spinning metal ball.

The Kinetic Spinning Desk Toy can be purchased on Amazon here.