Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Random thoughts

Random thoughts of a non-medicated adult with ADHD

(coming out of the fog of surfing the internet, blah, blah, blah. Starts out in the home office)

Oh, shoot, my phone's ringing. Daycare may be calling.

Where is the phone? I don't see it on the living room couch, is it in the kitchen? (goes to kitchen)

Shoot, I started the tea kettle to make tea, and it's boiling, probably has been boiling for a while.

Makes tea (which is now probably getting too strong and needs sugar).

This is crazy. I should blog about how random all of this is.

Aha! My purse is on the yellow rocking chair; my phone is in it.

Back to the home office to blog.

(Note that all of this transpired in about … 30 seconds …)

Now I'm off to take out the tea bag and add sugar. Then maybe I will get to the second thing on my list from earlier (first after eat lunch.) Focus just isn't there today …

Procrastination confession

Good morning, is it really 11:00 already? I need to leave for lunch in 15 minutes and have done nothing today. Or it feels like it. How can I do nothing in 5 hours? I have:

  • Played solitare on the computer (but did I really do that for more than 10 minutes or so?)
  • Checked e-mail
  • Finished a blog post
  • Played on Twitter
  • Rotated the laundry and folded what was in the dryer
  • Taken DS to school, after we napped together
  • Prepared dinner – it's in the crock pot. (Corned beef, yum)
  • Went to the post office to check mail

I should have been doing client work this morning. And I need to.

(distraction: I really need to close tweetdeck sometimes!!!)

So this afternoon, I will:

  • Eat a good lunch (looking forward to it!) and get some caffeine in my system
  • Draft the minutes from the church meeting last week
  • Call my business partner
  • Spend 20 minutes on a blog post
  • Call 1 clients
  • Research for 1 client for 20 minutes
  • Call 2 "other people"

Other than lunch, that should take me no more than 2 ½ hours. It feels like a long list, I have to remember it's really not!

Monday, March 1, 2010

Office Hats

I am a completely disorganized (yes, I'll admit it) work-at-home-mom with my own business. How do I keep it together? One step at a time, but I am trying to create systems and routines that make it easier on me (and my family).

Today I sat down and thought about what I would have if I worked in a "real" law firm. You know, all those little things I don't want to do because they take away from my billables. There's quite a lot, actually. First, I would have a set work schedule. OK, I can do that. DS is in daycare, so his daycare days help define my work schedule. I need time without him to do some housework, so I need to set some hours while he's in daycare to do household things as well (cleaning, laundry, that type of thing).

The scheduling has worked pretty well at least today. I considered the time I dropped him off as my time to start work – I did a planning session and hit the ground running. When I got home, I kept reminding myself that I'm not "home" until later today, when I can take care of the dishwasher, etc. I'll get "off work" about 2 hours before I pick up DS from daycare, hopefully enough time to get the house somewhat manageable.

The second thing I would have if I worked in a "real" office is support staff. I would have a janitor, a bookkeeper/accountant, a secretary/paralegal (in an ideal world), and an office manager. So I assigned chores to these people – what would each of these people be doing so I can do my work? I also listed my "lawyer" job description.

Then, I started working – I brought the janitor in for 30 minutes to clean. Wow, my office looks better! Then the janitor left and I worked as a secretary for another 30 minutes. Decided that's not nearly enough time, but at least I made a dent. The office manager then came back in and did more planning. Now I am freed up to be a lawyer for the rest of the afternoon. And, the best part – I actually feel like I've gotten things accomplished today! Recently I've had the feeling that I'm spinning my wheels and spending all day not getting anything done, so I feel much better about what I've done today.

I finally feel like I'm getting some progress toward having systems in place. Yay me!