When Life Upsets Your Routine

Life is looking up for me. My son was found and our granddaughter came into this world on December 18th. Even though there is a lot of stuff to deal with from the aftermath of our son's situation, and will continue for another month or two, life is promising.

This situation has been a great interruption to my routine, and then the holidays demanded that I pay attention to family and not work. My husband dealt with the same requirement also. Although he is able to hook up and work from home, it's not as easy as it is for me, who works from home for oneself. I saw a new appreciation for self-employment in my husband's eyes through this.

Now I have a few working days in the midst of the ending holiday, and before the next of our appointments with our son. But the routine is blown and the organization of my job is askew. How do you recover from that?

By going back to basics. Don't Panic. (Just find your towel and keep it by you at all times, and you'll be fine... for all the Douglas Adams fans out there.)

Seriously, go back to writing everything down that you need to achieve. Writing your goals down is the first and most important step in achieving those goals. Even the very small ones. Don't keep an inventory of tasks in your mind, write them down.

After you've written down your tasks/goals, check them off as you complete them. You'll be amazed how accomplishing even one item can give you more energy and motivation to move on down the list.

Now, for planned time off, you can prepare this list ahead of time. Work it out the day before your time off and when you come back it's there and ready for you.

Oh...one other thing. DO NOT answer your emails right away. Set aside a specific time for doing those and create a time limit. Emails are dangerous when you're trying to catch up!