Procrastination and making it work for me.

I often find my self with various things to do and can not settle, after good sort out there is normally something I need to do but I am procrastinating. The sheer number of small tasks I get done while avoiding the Bogey man task is fab and makes me look a very productive person. But the task still awaits me, so I have found a solution, which works for me anyway. I identify the task I am avoiding and break it into small bits, I then let my self do other jobs in avoidance with the small broken down tasks slid in every time I feel I have left it too long. My desk gets sorted, my paper work clears itself, the to do list gets shorter and even some long term aims get some attention, until I can look at the big task and see how small it now is and how easy it is to finish! Sometimes I get caught out with time and find myself struggling to get it done, and occasionally I just do the big task!

This does mean that some days I am literally moving paper from pile to pile and it seems form the outside nothing gets done. While others I have folk saying how good I am at working! My working pattern, environment, aims are all about to change. I am moving to the new library some time in the next six to eight weeks. My desk is one of four in an office we share, with the possibility of hot desking so my area must be clear or cleared up for the day end. My focus on high school will come to an end as I am now over seeing a community library with cradle to grave focus. This is the reason I started to change my out look back in 2008ish when I knew that things had to change and I must change with them. Living in the comfort zone is no challenge, is so static, is safe! I can not allow myself to be safe. Safe is not changing, fun, current and above all safe will not keep me employed in the current climate.

So much has changed in the last seventeen years since I first started this job, technology has broken down a lot of barriers and my many cries into the empty echoing space around me finally is heard and replied to. The very formal and structured job I started has long gone, the Internet has replaced all but the most well read non-fiction. The information is current and relevant, they can all find something to work on. The flip side is the changes in education, gone are the book reports and detailed essays, changed are the way they do things meaning that my major usage is for computers and typing up and no longer reading for pleasure, there is no time in the course work, not time for extra stuff, no time to just kick back and enjoy a book. The focus on a wider well rounded pupil has left us with narrow focused and limited adults with no real understanding of challenge and failure.

My plans for new ideas and events, the programme for the library is under way, part developed but after three dates to move that passed with no move I am sitting on the rest until we have a proper move! The whole idea scares me half to death but I have learnt that I get much more from failure than success and I expect some things to fail! I am stretching my wings, pushing my own work to the very edge and hanging over it with my feet. Comfort zone is long gone, I have sleepless nights, and fears of failure but it will be amazing if half works it will be stunning. My plans have always been to have a cutting edge library on the edge of the country, be a destination, a venue, a focus. We are nearly there and the wait is very hard, it wars with the fear of change, and clashes with that bit that still wants to be back in the comfort zone.

Oh why yes I do have something I should be doing now, but oh look this blog post needed doing. But even while typing I am poking and doing what needs done, the mess is of my own making I went at a task with little to no planning and made mistakes, and now I must pull it apart and try and salvage it, which is interesting and I am learning more but I so do not want to do it. And now it is done.

Just a morning picture over my village with the forest I live in in the middle. We have now past midwinter and sliding swiftly into spring, with the promise of summer (and a booked holiday for myself and loved ones already planned).