ELISA ENGLISH's Blog 英語園地

So Many Things, So Little Time

I like what Queen Elizabeth (The First) said about time: All my possession for a moment of time. 

Even though I had once said that being over the age of temptation does make me a bit less tempted, I am not totally free of temptation or doubt. 

Lately, I felt a huge surge of anxiety over so many things I wanted to do, yet with so little time to spare. 

I am inundated with ideas, feeling so out of hand, in fear that I cannot do them all, and that my mind cannot handle them all.    

I am falling behind, without each day passing that I don’t feel ants in pants.  I am so restless with ideas -- ideas that I am lack of time to jog them down.  There are so many things that I wanted to write, and that I wanted to share with you.  I want to write more articles to tell you the different grammar rules, the right English usage, the best way of translation, and the various writing techniques.  I want to introduce to you some of the books I read and the joy and excitement along with it.  I want to answer more Yahoo Knowledge questions and provide my comments so more people can benefit from getting to better and more accurate grammar and English usage. 

I have so much passion with so many things I want to do, yet with so little time to spare.  As we speak, I can hardly keep myself from dozing off writing this article.  It is past 11pm, not too late though.  However, I think that my body might be over-taxed now that it is taking a toll on my health.  Maybe, I have been so tensed lately, keeping myself in super-high alert and performance, that my body can no longer take it.

At work, I am trying to deliver four projects between April and June this year– each between 300 thousand to over half a million dollars.  Though, these projects, considered small in budget, are in reality medium size projects due to their complexity and high visibility for their enormous impact to the company.  Their timelines are firm and highly aggressive.  Managing small projects is no different than managing large projects in that you still have the same amount of project management work, the same number of project documentation to write and maybe similar number of issues to resolve.  Sometimes, managing multiple small projects is multiple times of the work of a large project.  I have been in both worlds and I like managing large projects rather than smaller projects as my mind is concentrated in one rather than in multiple areas that I have to switch gears all the time.  Research, such as from David Meyer, psychology professor at the University of Michigan and others, has shown that multi-tasking actually creates inefficiency, as the time lost switching among tasks increases with the complexity of the tasks.

These projects have consumed most of my time.  I have been eating at my desk trying to finish up my meal in less than 15 minutes.   I have been eating in sporadic hours between 1pm to 3pm.  I have been meeting all days with little time left to recap and document issues and resolutions.    

Anyway, it is rather hectic since I returned from my vacation in February.  I think that it is punishment to me for taking a week off.  I cannot imagine what would happen if I take three weeks off to Taiwan .  However, I cannot complain too much as nowadays it is lucky just to have a job.

Like what William Shakespeare wrote in Henry IV: I see no reason why thou shouldst be so superfluous to demand the time of the day. 

Maybe I should try to apply time management skill on my work, my personal life as a wife and a mom to two very young kids, and my private life as a non-profit educator.

This is the link to the time management skill I read on the web.  http://www.lmu.edu/PageFactory.aspx?PageID=565   They seem to be sound tactics, only if I had time to apply.  Maybe it will be helpful to you.