John Linton My personal week was dominated by a succession of very long meetings concerned with making adjustments to residential ADSL plans and the many changes that required to the web site and the back end processes. We completed the last of those changes by midday on Thursday and looked at the various ways we could improve our mobile broadband plans in preparation for similarly intense meetings to this week's ADSL review scheduled for next Wednesday. I can't remember any period in my 'career' when I spent so much time in 'meetings'. Undoubtedly a sign of the times....but what sign I am not sure.
Perhaps it's a combination of spending a week doing intense reviews in Colombo plus the brutal traveling times to and from Sri Lanka immediately followed by 4 days of extremely long meetings in North Sydney but I am feeling very jaded even after a do absolutely nothing day yesterday. Perhaps the rain currently falling in Sydney so far this morning hasn't helped. Perhaps its simply the wear and tear becoming more obvious in an aging body and mind. It seems to be more difficult for me to find 'inspiration' in doing the endless tasks that fill each new day and continue in to each succeeding day without diminution. In the past I have always been able to cope with the sheer banality of the vast majority of tasks I have to address each day by finding some purpose (beyond the fact that they have to be done) in spending my, now scarce, time carrying them out. That seems harder to do these days than it should.
So I have begun looking at my options in enlivening my days. It is going to take a long while because, as I am sure most other people who have tried such a process quickly realise - where on Earth do you start? Doubtless I will give up on this process before very long but I will persist for the balance of this weekend to try and find ways of making my days more enjoyable (to me) and more productive/useful (to the people I interact with). The first decision I could make would be to stop spending the first two hours of every waking day 'researching' the communications markets in Australia and elsewhere and writing this blog. When you think about it two hours a day, 365 days a year, is a very significant amount of anyone's life and I have been spending that time for a very long time now.
There are so many other 'commitments' like that which have continued to grow over time that I now realise that there remains very little time for anything else more enjoyable to take place. Most people I know with whom I or they have initiated such a conversation say the same blatantly obvious things - all along the lines of "life is so important why do we waste so much of it?" The short answer is that we "let it happen" to the point that we narrow our choices so much to the point that we have no choices - perhaps (although I have never tried it) like taking heroin or cocaine. Obviously reading or writing aren't as dangerous to your physical or mental health but they are equally addictive and take away 'disposable time'.
Having re-read what I have just written my immediate reaction was to delete it. However I lack the energy to re-write something more meaningful so I apologise for wasting the time of anyone who bothered to read it. If I can't do better tomorrow I will stop wasting the time it takes to write these random thoughts and use the time more sensibly.
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