The meeting I had in Dallas was a peer group of other geeks in businesses similar to mine.

One of the topics I brought up for discussion was time management. And in a fun little bit of irony, we ran out of time on the first day to talk about it, and ended up talking about it the following morning.

The largest challenge I face in my everyday business life is managing my time effectively. After running through what I thought to be the problem, our facilitator asked me: "What is the real problem?"

And she's right.... The problem isn't really managing my time effectively. I am for the most part a reasonably skilled manager, and can effectively do just about anything that needs to be done.

The issue she suggested is really fear.... And I don't necessarily disagree with her.

What do I fear about actually doing those things that need to be done, instead of the things I am doing? Perhaps admitting the things I think need to be done really aren't that important?

An interesting question to work through.

Some of the folks in the peer group gave me an interesting insight. We all, everyone in my line of work, have crazy schedules that can easily swing out of control. It is partly the nature of the beast, unless you're a service company with dozens of employees, an emergency or wrinkle in the schedule isn't controllable, and sometimes unavoidable. The trick is to stop using that as a crutch to not get the important things done.

One member offered that he never schedules things on Mondays, since that is the craziest day for them. Another suggested putting my list of things in writing, prioritizing them as best as possible, and then picking the top three and focusing on them, instead of the whole list.

People don't repetitively do things that they don't really want to do.... I wonder if I find some satisfaction in the chaos?

The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves.