Leaving Sisyphus

Last post I mentioned I have been feeling like Sisyphus lately, stuck on a hill struggling to do something pointless. Here’s what I’ve been doing to get off the hill… in no particular order:

• Take Mini-Vacations - I have 16 vacation days, which expire at the end of December. Since I don’t have any big trips planned, I’ve been using one day a week to work on my website, write, read… and invest my uninterrupted attention in something where I’m productive.
  • This has helped revitalize me a lot. I day a week completely focused on my hobbies and a new creative outlet has helped me come back to work energized. Since some of it is about GTD and productivity (like this), it’s also helped me enrich my Weekly Review process.
  • This has also left less time for work each week, and I’ve been tracking my hours and refusing to allow work to simply “spill over” into another day a week. It’s partly related to Parkinson’s Law, which holds that work expands to fill the time allowed for it. Thus, by not working another day a week to make up for the day I miss on vacation, I’m forcing myself to prioritize and keep work inside some strict time limits.
• Set Pending Deadlines - My boss suggested we put deadlines on the pending things, make others aware of these deadlines, and if no answer comes by the deadline, then we take action and resolve it ourselves.
• Ignore Deadlines - I had a deadline to get some lower priority work to someone else so they could do it for me. Meeting that deadline would have meant delaying higher priority work. So, it was easier to miss the lower priority deadline and do it myself. This isn’t a good trade-off all the time, but in this case it was worth it.
• Get Help - As I look through what I do in a day, I’m starting a list of things I could “outsource” to someone else to do for me with minimal supervision. Once I have enough of them, I’ll give them to a Faculty Assistant to do for me. It’s that “20/80″ rule that 20% of your work is the most valuable, and 80% of it is grunt stuff that takes up more time than it should.
• Change the Desktop Wallpaper - I Googled for pictures of Sisyphus and use one as my desktop wallpaper. Like I said, I’m not in hell, and a reminder of that is good.
• Use the Pending Time - I’ve not been in the mood to deal with email, so I haven’t. Instead,
  • I’ve focused on trying to wrap up projects I can finish as a way to use this “pending” time wisely. Anything I’ve left undone, I’m trying to get done, which helps increase my sense of productivity. It also helps others in that if they’ve been waiting on something low-priority from me, they get it finally.
  • I’ve started planning ahead for things I want to do more effectively than last time. One of these is the review of fourth year students. We will do it differently this year and I so I am planning out how that should happen in advance.
• Bargain - A productivity guru would say I should just accept the “nagging” time and set a tickler to remind me to nag for things two to three weeks in advance of when I need them. While a good idea in general, it won’t work in most cases for me, as I need the information as soon as those I nag can get it. However, I am wondering about ways to bargain with other Departments. “Here’s what you need, here’s what I need… so, can we make a deal?”
• Recharge Work Batteries - I’ve found some folks not in this same funk, and tried to borrow some of their positive energy. I’m to the point of trying to lend it out again now.
• Get Help - We’ve talked about the sense of being on the hillside, and several people bringing this to “The Powers That Be” has helped. I’m not talking about general griping and complaining, but rather several folks at my boss’ level taking the state of things to the vice-president and generating suggestions for systemic-improvement has generated some “light at the end of the tunnel.”
• Ride It Out - I’m struck that my funk only lasted a few weeks, but some around me were not in a funk at all. Maybe these things don’t last very long in healthy organizations…

What do you do to get off the hillside of Sisyphus?