My boss is a real slave driver.  At it or on call 24/7.  Yes, I’m self employed, so how do I make it hard on myself?  Things such as: Not scheduling enough time for sleep, so a good night’s sleep puts me behind schedule.  Or, my biggest one, I set a goal for myself that I’ll do the billing on Monday and then I schedule other duties to be done the rest of the week.  So when Monday comes around and I choose to instead take the day off, now the pressure is on because the billing isn’t done and I need to move on to other chores first thing Tuesday morning.  Or so I tell myself.  I get so good at tricking myself into getting things done by deadline, that I can forget what’s a real deadline and what is just a flexible goal I set for myself.  I do that on purpose.

Like yesterday, I’d set the goal to finish Monday the billing I felt too low energy to do Saturday.  Instead, I woke up feeling like I just wanted to run errands.  I enjoy driving around in the sunshine on a beautiful day.  It’s a favorite thing to do.  By noon I decided to stop pretending I was going in the office to bill, and just allow myself to goof off the rest of Monday. Doing that allowed me to relax and keep from beating myself up for not finishing the billing.  There was no reason I couldn’t do it the next day.

I’ve learned to only schedule about 4 hours of “work” a day, knowing that mail and emails and phone calls will create another 6 hours of work to be done.  But I keep forgetting to factor in more than 4 hours sleep every 12 hours.  This morning I slept until 10:30am.  Instead of waking up thinking “Oh phooey, I overslept”, I woke up thinking, “it sure feels good to oversleep when I don’t have to be anywhere else”.  That helped me lighten up and set the tone for the day.

So, I shoot myself in the foot with my goal setting by failing to figure into my schedule my down time, plenty of sleep time, plenty of rejuvenation time (translation: me blissfully alone in the silence).

When I remember to schedule in time to rejuvenate, then the billing will be a breeze — whenever I get to it.

Nothing has to change except my perception of how much work I have, how much time I believe it will take me to do it, and how I feel about doing what must be done.

I can make it easy or hard, my choice.

I love my life.

LISTEN FREE: Re-Program Your Consciousness