Falling behind

Note: way little poker content in this one.

I think I'm trying to juggle too many commitments, and am falling behind on most of them. Most of the commitments are internal -- I decided I wanted to do them -- but some are even external. It's too much of a good thing, or really too many good things to do them all.

Time management has never been a particularly strong suit of mine, which makes things pretty difficult. Loose ends don't particularly frustrate me, but they do stress me out a bit. They make me feel like I'm letting someone down, even if that someone is myself only. For a poker example, I committed to myself to keep up with a number of forums, a couple study groups, review my play, and of course play. When I can't do all those things to my satisfaction, I get down on myself a little bit, even when I clearly have to focus on other aspects of life which mean more than poker.

If it were just poker, while I wouldn't like it, I would be OK. But, there are some work and household items that also suffer because I am not devoting enough time to them. And that's where I really need to be careful. Now, nothing essential suffers at work or for the house, but just like in poker where all the little blind steals add up and become a significant part of your profit, so do all the little details in the rest of your life add up and become a significant part of how well things are going.

It's all about finding the best balance. There are endless things I could find to fill 100% of my time either work related or home related, so I'll never do everything you could possibly do.

The big thing at work that I worry about now is how responsive I am to issues from my team and how well I push things forward. There are times when I could be critically analyzing software designs and helping everyone get things done a bit better, but instead I am critically analyzing a hand history or video. There are times when I could be revamping a project plan in anticipation of an executive review, but instead I'm reading about some new poker software. In the big picture, I'm spending a hell of a lot more time on work than on poker, but do I have the right balance? Usually I'm pretty confident I do, but lately I've been devoting more time and energy to poker, so the balance has changed. I think I'm OK, but I don't yet have the certainty I'm used to.

If I take a couple hours out of the work day to participate in some session or to sweat someone, I feel obligated to make that work time up later. The Company doesn't care when I get my work done as long as it gets done, but they clearly aren't paying me to sit around and think about poker (or write this blog, or anything else non-work that I do during conventional office hours). Aside from the whole job performance issue, which is certainly a good motivator to make up those lost hours, I feel a moral obligation to make it up.

So that leads to some of the household balls I'm attempting to juggle. Whether it's making up work time, or playing some hands, or my weekly golf and tennis games, there are some things at home that go undone. Again, it's not a question of whether I do any extraneous activity, but more about the balance. The family still gets a ton of time, so all is good in that regard. But there are a number of chores that have been piling up, which I've neglected recently. I used to be anal about getting all of our financial transactions into Quicken, for instance, but I'm now at a 2 or 3 month backlog. In and of itself, that's not terrible, because we have made no unusual expenditures and every time I pay a bill, the balance in our bank account is in the range I expect. But Jennifer looks at the growing pile of mail to be processed and gets annoyed with me, and she's probably right.

Somewhere in that pile are my license tags which I better remember to find and apply before the end of the month. And that's really the essence of what stresses me out about the house stuff. A bunch of stuff that I've deferred, but will eventually have to do, combined with a growing mental to-do list where things either are or have slipped my mind until I have to react to them very quickly (or I get a ticket for expired tags, or a bank charge, or something like that). Plus, Jennifer is annoyed with me. Nothing earth shattering, but a bunch of little things that collectively make a difference.

OK, enough about all that life balance stuff. Like I said, things are pretty much great, and I'm just rambling. As far as poker, I haven't played much at all since my last blog entry. What I have played has been pretty interesting, has gone up and down, and has given me a fair amount to think about.

I'll dig some thoughts/hands out in the next couple days. Provided I get my work done and can make a dent in that mail pile :).