Drinking coffee after 7PM is a lot like drinking alcohol before noon… only for the exact opposite reasons. But sometimes you just have to do it. Maybe you’ve been dragging all day and you still have a pile of work to do before the morning or you absolutely have to stay awake studying for finals. Maybe you just lost your job, your dog ran away and you woke up to find your partner has left you via Facebook. These things happen. There are times in life when nothing is more consoling than a screwdriver with your eggs and bacon (Rarely! And not if you have to work or drive…), and there are also times in life when you have to choke down some muddy caffeine water at 9 or 10 at night just to stay upright.
This Friday night is one of those nights for me. I’ve had so much on my to-do lists that it just seems impossible, especially with my crazy (and amazing) almost-two-year-old taking a good deal of my daytime energy. All these notes and pieces of scribbled-on paper have been mocking me for too long, reminding me of all the things I desperately need to get done that I have yet to accomplish. What I need to do is focus only on the things that I know I accomplish and then let the other things take care of themselves. I’ve been reading “The Law of Attraction in Action” which is a great starting place for this kind of thinking…
The hardest thing for me at this point, though, is just doling out my limited resources (energy, time, emotions, etc. ) in a way that maximizes my productivity. My daughter always comes first, but then I have to juggle my work, my work I don’t get paid for (blogging!, networking, etc.), job-hunting, and all the things that fulfill me and make me happy. This happens to everybody, but I’m in a sort of transitional phase now where I’m trying to make my hobbies into a career while taking care of the bottom line and staying afloat until everything works out. So, here’s the plan. Here’s the idea…
Envision it. What do you want? Picture it, go through the motions in your mind. Once you have an idea of what you’re trying to accomplish and you envision yourself following through and making these things happen then it’s eerie how things just fall into place. Star athletes do this all the time; they picture themselves breaking ankles and crushing their opponents and then rely on their talent and drive to make it happen. You have to focus on what you want and not all the things that could potentially get in your way. If you focus on problems that you think might slow you down or all the possible negative outcomes then those problems will in fact come up.
What you consistently focus on is what you believe. I have a lot I want to get done tonight, so I’ll relax and be in ‘Friday mode’ later… maybe Sunday. Tonight I’ll drink coffee, break through this wall and be more productive than any weekday afternoon, because that’s what I’m going to make myself believe I need to do. Drink some coffee, do what you need to do. It’s early still.
