Post holiday struggles

This week has been hard. Last week we were in the west of Scotland, 8 miles down a single track road, surrounded by water, trees and hills. Yes, it was a little rainy, yes we did get lost on walks a few times and do some unnecessary hills, but there was a sense of space. Now we still appear to be down a single track road but that’s due to the number of cars parked along our road, and although I am fortunate to have a garden to look out on, there are fences, and hedges and roads. I feel hemmed in. Hemmed in by the surroundings, but also by my diary, and email and the looming new school terms with commitments and schedules. In the grand scheme I know there are bigger problems in the world, but it is possible for it to be simultaneously true that there are people in much worse situations AND for me to be struggling with my own situation.

Mostly on holiday I read fiction – and not all “great” fiction either – it’s good to escape to other places sometimes and books have always been the way I do that. At the start of the week though I finally got around to reading Atomic Habits by James Clear. Whilst a lot of it to be honest were things I had read before about habit forming, one thing has stuck. He points out that lots of people can have the same goal, but the people who had developed good systems pointing towards that goal were the people that achieved their goal. And that although systems can at first glance appear constraining, they can also be free-ing.

On my return to my desk, I was pleased to find that one system I set up before I went away was indeed working to free me up in some way. I finally got around to setting up a booking system for phone calls for clients – through my calendly link people can book discovery calls or coaching sessions without the to-and-fro of emails. Setting up the system has forced me to block out some clear time for these calls and therefore other clear times for undisturbed client work too. And several people had booked calls for the next 2 weeks. One small step towards implementing a system that helps me spend more time on the interesting bits of work and less on the admin!

This weekend’s task is therefore to look for systems that might be useful around the house. In theory we have systems but they have probably be viewed as optional vague ideas by some members of the household. I think I need to present them as “this is what you will do when this happens” instead!