Lately i have been suffering from what I can only describe as exhaustion. I’m sure there is likely another reason for it, a more insidious reason lurking in my subconscious… but for now I would rather deal with it on the surface and not get too far into the details of what is failing in my psyche.

Things were just feeling… draggy. 

Work is seriously kicking my butt lately. Not a shock. Summer and fall are our busy times, and even though the sector I work in (construction) slowed down a bit in my area, we were relatively untouched from the larger recession and weathered the storm. What that meant for me was that although I had very little to do January through June, there was plenty of paperwork generated for me to deal with after June… and its not the kind of stuff that is just a one time thing, its paperwork that generates future paperwork… and the tracking and monitoring and filing of all of that work.

Most days I feel like I’m living under threat of avalanche from the various files dumped onto my desk. And while it is fairly NON-Time Sensitive (for the most part) there is psychological pressure to get things clean and clear.

(Its not working….shhhh)

I’m allowing myself to get stressed out about things. Some things I have control over, others I do not… and yet, I treat all of it equally — at work and at home. Which is exhausting. But the focus has just been on getting it done, moving through, not worrying about classifications.

Until recently.

When I had a small break down in my system of getting things done.

It doesn’t truly matter what the break down was, what caused it, only that it happened. And when it happened it was immediately clear:

NOT ALL THINGS ARE EQUALLY IMPORTANT.

Which should have been self-evident, but had gotten lost in one of the piles that had taken over the inbox of my desk. In the rush to get things cleared out of the inbox, to get answers to all questions, and to get SOMETHING accomplished, I was finding that I wasn’t getting ANYTHING completely accomplished at all!

I was constantly being interrupted, mid-task, and reassigned… which added stress to my job and decreased my focus. I was finding that my manager was constantly re-assigning my time, not allowing me to complete tasks that were important, and asking me to complete things that were not time sensitive OR within my job scope… which meant that instead of getting things done, I was getting things HALF done or a quarter done, and having to leave at the end of the day with partially completed tasks to deal with the following day.

And having the knowledge that, not only are tasks waiting for me that are only partially completed but that it is likely that my manager will have assigned, dropped on my desk, emailed, or phoned in MORE small tasks in the meantime, took a toll on me at home as well. I was always left with the feeling of overwhelm — a mental ADD where I wasn’t completing tasks, or getting distracted by more immediate concerns (aka what is currently DIRECTLY in front of me at the time) — and things were starting to spiral completely out of control.

And that’s what I’m doing