Since I have been working in the human rights activism, I have always a lot of work to attend to. At the beginning it was quite a challenge to get all things done within a reasonable time frame, because planning was not done correctly, but over the years I learned that planning is very important if one wanted to get things done in an organized manner. Though I had learned how to make lists and check lists, yet I often ask myself why after a week, a month…a year is gone by, when all is done I feel frustrated by all the things I could not complete, why is that all things I should have done are not completed, and the things that I Shouldn’t have are achieved?
In life we devote our time to the things we choose to spend our time on. We make choices all the time in our lives to act in a way or in another, though our choices are not always conscious or visible. For one to decide on whether to watch TV or finish a report, sleep or read a book one have to make a choice because we always have one.
When we don’t plan, we end up responding to the events as they happen daily, weekly, monthly …. So I realize that learning how to manage my time better was the key to free up more time that I could devote to other important task.
I also noticed that every time I did not plan what I wanted to achieve daily, weekly, monthly I experienced or still experiencing frequent changes in my planned agenda.
From morning my phone will start ringing, e-mails coming in, peoples needing my assistance in some a way or another, before I know it I would put in a lot of energy attending to this unplanned but seemingly urgent several demands, at the end of the day I would realize that I haven’t accomplish what I wanted to do for the day.
I have also learned that it wasn't enough just setting goals and planning task that needed to be done, but while doing so prioritizing was equally important as planning for me to achieve my goals on daily, weekly, monthly and even yearly. This means focusing on accomplishing planed task in order of their importance, though in our human rights work sometimes it’s difficult to separate the dilemma of having to get both “Urgent” and “Important” things at the same time.
I have also learned that sometimes in order to achieve the planned goals, I need to sacrifice some task that I would have loved to undertake and do the task that has to be done to achieve the planned goals.
One thing I am still wondering about is the difference between my satisfaction and achievement, when a planned goal is attained.
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