If there is anything in all the world I am not good at, it is time and energy management. Anyone who has ever worked with me will readily share that I am bit vague about when something should happen.

Learning to arrive on time, finish things on time and keep up with payment plans have all been a part of an ongoing process and learning to understand my personal approach to these things. My approach to time and energy management can usually be summed up in one word: Panic.

There is a good reason for this: I have a tendency to over-estimate the number of things that I can actually accomplish in a given amount of time. I usually have a fairly good grasp of what needs to be done, but I may not have enough personal energy to encompass all the processes and I may not have a realistic assessment of the amount of time needed to fulfill an obligation. After realizing that I was doing it  to myself again — overloading, that is — I backed off my number of work assignments and stopped accepting new ones.

A quick assessment of my remaining obligations went something like this:

• Adjunct teaching: 6 hours in the classroom, and at least 6 hours outside the classroom.
• Librarianship: 10 to 20 hours per month.
• Client #1: About 16 hours weekly, depending on difficulty.
• Client #2: Variable, depending upon snags, content and difficulty, BUT needs at least 16 hours a week.
• Housekeeping: 4 hours daily
• Yard work: 8 hours weekly
• Personal care: at least 30 minutes daily
• Playtime: I really need at least one hour, and two are better to refresh my brain daily

By adding up these times, it becomes quickly evident why I was not meeting obligations and why I was becoming exhausted and frustrated. So here I am, age sixty, and technically retired, but still trying to learn how to balance my personal energy, my time and my obligations. What can I say? I am a work in progress.