Well this was the first week of the year where my schedule went out the window. A lot of things impacted on me and the result was that I haven’t kept up with the expectations I set for myself.
If I had made a bunch of new year resolutions, this would have been the week that they didn’t get met, and once we miss a few days or even a week, it becomes easier not to maintain doing whatever your resolution was.
I’ve been very run down these last five days and frankly, jotting down a few words on my blog hasn’t been high on my priorities.
Last Sunday night we had two of my favourite interstate clients come and stay with us as I was doing an intensive coaching session with them all day Monday. I threw a some steaks on the barbie on Sunday night, and we foolishly cracked open a few beers … but that wasn’t the catalyst that threw my week out of schedule…
Because I had the clients staying with me on Sunday night, I didn’t go for my Monday morning jog – instead, we all did an early morning walk to the top of the mountain. Another late night followed then I did my usual 10km jog/walk with one of the clients. After the clients left at around lunchtime on Tuesday, I just got on with my usual day. (still no blog post)
I shouldn’t have watched Obama
Wednesday 21st was when it all started to go pear shaped for me. After getting to bed at near midnight on Tuesday, we decided to get up to watch Barack Obama’s inauguration. I was keen to hear his first speech – so at 3am on a warm summer morning I find myself sitting up in bed with the fan on and watching a crowd freezing on the other side of the world.
So Wednesday started at 3am, and these three consecutive nights of little sleep set the tone for the rest of the week. I was so tired on Wednesday that I bumbled thought the day achieving relatively little.
By Thursday I felt that I was off my game, so I made a determined effort to get back on track. I started the day with a 10km (6.4 mile) jog and got stuck into work. About two hours into it, I discovered that four of my websites had just been infected with a malware virus that the ISP in the US had contracted. I then wasted most of the day checking our computers and getting our sites – including this one – back up working virus free.
By Friday I was feeling under pressure from a mounting backlog of work and was seriously considering not going to my usual Friday morning gym session in order to make an early start and get on top of things. Immediately I recognised that this type of thinking was a resolution killer, and made a conscious decision to go to the gym.
Going to the gym proved to be a good thing. The friendly banter at the gym, the drive to and fro and the kick ass coffee Don makes at the gym combined to fire me up for the day. So finally my Friday came in pretty much as planned, (except I had intended to do a run before I went to the gym.) and we finished the week by going out for dinner and seeing Clint Eastwood’s latest – Gran Torino – which I highly recommend.
Stay focused on your daily routine
There was a lot more to the last five days than I have outlined above – we had storms – phone calls – meetings – and family times and other interruptions.
I could very easily have thrown my planned routine out the figurative window – and you shouldn’t either.
You will have weeks like this – as I will again – but the key is to remain focused. Be mindful of why you set your routine in place in the first place. By all means, change your routine, but don’t ignore it. We plan for a purpose – and to fail to plan is to lose focus of your purpose.