On Keeping Up
Keeping up with long term involvements, fast paced shorter situations can be a challenge. If you love challenges, you are probably going to chase a constant overload or high stress situations.
If you're like the rest of us, or just not a workaholic you might find some of this stuff actually disturbing. Currently I have been thinking about work/work/life balance and a conclusion is still a little further away.
The things I do from teaching, to coding and video/photography all are extremely tempting and everybody has amazing projects I really, really want to do or participate in. The difficult part comes at prioritizing what is the most important and to actually do the most important, not the most fun.
It's a little like the quote from a great article about self discipline, you just need to figure out what the most critical thing to do is and execute it.
If you wait until you feel like doing stuff, you’re fucked . That’s precisely how the dreaded procrastinatory loops come about.
Source: Screw motivation, what you need is discipline.
Trying to fit everything together and that without losing a positive spirit is a challenge. As a teacher you have to be very available. If somebody is struggling professionally it sometimes takes some extra soft skills to make them feel well and welcome, which is what I'm trying to achieve every day.
At the end of the day I tend not to get as much done as I want to, at home, working on code, blog posts, manuscripts, retouching pictures or editing video. The logical way out of this, would just to be to take on less projects at the same time, but sometimes you just really want to work some extra hours and effort to push them out the door.
When I get the feeling of being well prepared or having done well or enough for the day I sleep well. I get a kick out of getting things done, especially when it's something that's new to me or I couldn't find the patience to take care of it before. Sometimes all it takes another half an hour of focused work and you're good to go.
When do you have the feeling that you're out of breath, but you just want to keep running? Do you have the feeling of: YES! I DID THAT! when you deliver a project on time or even a day early?