Life is this.  And I’ve been bad at it.  I tend to say yes to everything that comes along in an attempt to be involved and to “help” others out.  In the end, I become a total stress case, and do not accomplish many things on MY list of things to do because I’m always working on OTHER’S things to do.  So, this is an area I need to work on.  I tend to lack focus and I think that lack of focus is a reason I take on these other things instead of being able to say, “No, I’m focused on this right now.”  I think this is a real problem for speech and debate coaches that often leads to premature burnout.  I think many of us tend to be control freaks, so we are hesitant to delegate and when we do delegate, we tend to stay over-involved in the delegated task.  We also tend to be procrastinators.  This means we end up unable to delegate becuase we wait until it is too late to delegate. 

I am going to work hard on focusing on one or two things at a time, completing those tasks and not being willing to take on more until those are done.  The problem with coaching is that you automatically have a number of things going on.  These include:

• Prepping for classes
• Teaching classes
• Grading for classes
• Tournament travel planning
• Tournament travel
• Reconciliation of money spent at tournaments
• Researching for speeches/debate
• Helping students in classes
• Helping students with speeches/debate
• Doing PR for the team
• Serving on committees
• Managing GA/TAs
• Networking with others on campus
• Networking with others via email
• Recruiting new team members
• Home life

I’m probably leaving out some stuff from the list, but geez…no wonder I’m often a total stress case living in utter chaos.  That’s a lotta stuff to do and keep track of.  I feel like there must be an excellent system out there to help with many of these tasks, but I really haven’t settled on one I like yet.  I’ve tried many things and some of them work and some of them don’t.  I will continue to try new things in the coming year.  But, these are the things that I need to put on my weekly to-do list – and figure out when I can do them – and then make sure I can do these things before I take on additional duties!

We’ll see how it goes.  I’ll provide any suggestions here that seem to work well and warn against the ones that really crash and burn!