Yesterday I managed to wrap up 4 projects at the film archive. All of them had been on my plate for at least a month--in some cases longer--and they were causing me a fair amount of stress, even in my off hours. (It's no fun to have a hard time sleeping because you're worried about when you can get a reference scan sent off to a patron.)
I can see several useful lessons from this experience, but probably the most valuable is: If something causes you stress, figure out what you can do about it and do that. (And if you cannot do anything, learn to say "There's nothing I can do" and shrug it off.) To use one project as an example, I wanted to try out an electronic deliverable for a reference scan. That's a great (and necessary!) goal for the archive, but in the meantime, I have an actual patron who wants some materials for a book he is working on. After lots of trial and error in getting the materials ready, I finally decided that for now it is best to just make photocopies (like I used to) and ship those to the patron, then continue to experiment on my own. And I felt much better after I did that, even with the frustration that something I'd worked on for weeks was otherwise accomplished in, say, fifteen minutes.
If I have one weakness as a worker, it's that I am always eager to take on new tasks, but I frequently take on too much, and then I wind up stressing out over all the things I haven't done. I try to remind myself to make task lists and set a small number of goals each day. If I finish 3 significant tasks per day, I can feel like I'm making progress. Especially if I have not at the same time added 4 or more tasks in the same day!
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