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Another Staycation Ends as Endless Works Looms on the Horizon

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Today is the last day in another one of these staycations and I’m pretty exhausted. Here’s a brief rundown of what I managed to accomplish on this staycation and some discussion around each one of these points. I’m also going to talk, briefly, about those things that I was not able to accomplish this time around that I’ll have to fit into some more time off coming in the near future.

  • Quality Time at the CSA Farm: In the next day or two, I’ll be posting some pictures of our recent takes from the local CSA farm. Spending time at the CSA farm is fun and a great way to be out there in a beautiful, rural area of New Jersey.
  • Asbury Park Boardwalk: One of my goals during this vacation from work was to spend some time laying on the beach. Well, I didn’t quite get to lay on the beach due to a rushed schedule, but I did get a chance to walk up and down the Asbury Park boardwalk, which was a lot of fun. Hopefully, we’ll have another warm day before the leaves change and I’ll be able to get to the beach for a final time this season.
  • Personal Planning: I’ve always wanted to take a week off from work to spend that free time focusing on me and what I’d like to do with the next X months/years of my life. I managed to squeeze in some time to consider those thoughts on Tuesday of last week, but I didn’t want to rush the situation, so I let it go for the time being. My next full week off from work is after Christmas, so that might be a good time. What I did come to a personal conclusion about, though, is how I need to start working out again with the same vigor that I had back in 2004 and 2005 (when I dropped 125 pounds before gaining 100 back). More on that one of these days.
  • Went to a Baseball Game: Going to a baseball game was high on my list of “do this before the summer ends” activities. This past Thursday night I went up to a Newark Bears game and had a really good time. So check that off the list!
  • Begin Teaching: Another reason why I wanted to take this time off was because it was the first week of school at the local college where I teach a political science class. This semester is the first time that I’m teaching at 8:30am instead of 7:25pm (big difference, huh?) so I wanted to give myself some time to get used to the campus atmosphere at that time of the day. Plus, I wanted to spend some extra time preparing my classes and reviewing my previously prepared presentations. I also began teaching three online courses at the local online university, too.
  • Say Thank You and Fundraise: Another reason why I opted to take this particular week off was because the Chief Operations Officer of the foundation where I serve as a Board Trustee and the Board Treasurer was in town this week. I was happy to host him in my home and travel with him around New Jersey on Wednesday through Saturday to say thank you to some of our donors from New Jersey. In addition to saying thank you, we were also able to host some meetings to educate some of our foundation’s volunteers and raise some additional funds around some of our initiatives. By my quick count, we raised about $22,000 in commitments and first-year pledges. Not too bad for three and a half days, huh? Plus, one can never be sure about any additional funds that may come in due to folks simply being excited about hearing “thank you” regarding their previous donations.
  • Worked with Local Chapter: I’ve noted numerous times on this blog how I work with the local chapter of my fraternity. In short, I act as a mentor to some of the undergraduate leaders and provide them with insight on how to operate their chapter in an efficient manner. Anyway, this was their first week back at school so I had dinner with some of their leaders, attended one of their meetings, and met with the entire chapter for lunch on campus. What’s even better is that I met with a young alumnus of the chapter that wants to do this job in my place – so I’m providing him with some training so that one day he could take over and act as the local chapter’s advisor. Great stuff.

Unfortunately, though, I was not able to accomplish all of the things that I planned on accomplishing during this staycation. For example, I wanted to renovate the syllabus for the class that I designed and taught for the first time last spring; just didn’t have the time to do that in the past week. Also, I wanted to finish up at least three of the books that I’m in the middle of reading at the moment – didn’t even pick up any of the books that I’m reading (too busy running around the state). With respect to JerseySmarts.com, I have some material that was sent in from some young writers and musicians that I wanted to review during the last week, but I’m going to have to push that off for another 10 – 14 days. And as for Usable Web Solutions, LLC, there were two major projects that I wanted to complete during the last week and I didn’t have a chance to start on either one of them.

But all of that is okay – I’m ready to get back to work and focus on hitting a couple of home runs in the office before the end of my company’s fiscal year on September 30, 2010! As for the rest of today, though, I’m heading over to a former roommate’s house to watch some football!

Back From “Boston” And Loaded With Work To Catch Up On…

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You know that feeling when you have your first day back in the office after having been gone for a while? Well, that was my day at the office yesterday. To give you a physical description of how it went – before I left for “Boston” (more on that in a minute) I was getting frequent tension headaches while at my office. Things were out of control on almost every transaction and my clients were about as unruly as you can get. The pain of the headaches was actually affecting my ability to relax when I went home each night.

Then I went to “Boston” and hung around with my fraternity brothers of all ages, engaged in some work for the Foundation, and had a few beers each night and wouldn’t you know that my headaches went away? Of course with the convention over I went back to work yesterday and all of a sudden guess what returned? That’s right – the tension headache came back and it was worse than before. So after driving home last night with my head pounding, I told myself that I was not dealing with anyone’s crap today and that I was going to deliberately slow down the pace of the work in my office so that we all weren’t running around like crazy people.

And do you know what happened today? No headache!

Sigma Pi Educational Foundation Logo

The Sigma Pi Educational Foundation

I’m not interested in being one of those people whose job makes them sick. No thank you. No, instead I want to be one of those people who wakes up in the morning and loves going to work. Right now, while I love my job, I hate going to work. Hopefully, that will change soon.

As for my trip to “Boston,” I put that word in parenthesis because we really didn’t stay in Boston or even outside of Boston. We were some 30 – 40 minutes away from Boston in a place called Danvers, Massachusetts. It was a little bizarre because the hotel bar stopped serving drinks at 12:15am and there was absolutely nothing within walking distance. Certainly a very odd place to hold a fraternity convention…

At the convention itself, I was elected to be the Treasurer of our fraternity’s Foundation as well as the Chairman of the Strategic Plan Study Group that will ultimately create a new strategic plan for the Foundation. I’m excited about both positions. Also, one of my fellow fraternity brothers from New Jersey was elected to be the National President of the Fraternity. For the first time in a long time there is a feeling of excitement and that “can do” attitude running throughout the undergraduate chapters, alumni clubs, and members of the Foundation Board of Trustees. I’m looking forward to helping the Sigma Pi Educational Foundation move forward by serving as its Treasurer – it’s going to be a fun two years!

Leaving for Boston Today – Coming Back Late Sunday Night

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By the time you read this, I’ll be on the train heading towards Boston, Massachusetts. Once I get to Boston, it’s off to Danvers, Massachusetts for my fraternity’s biennial convention. I’ve never been up to that part of the country before, so I’m looking forward to doing some sightseeing when the schedule allows.

Once you graduate from being regular fraternity guy to someone who volunteers and actively donates his time and money to the fraternity, these conventions become quite the event. You get to see guys that you haven’t caught up with in a while and, depending upon how/if you volunteer for the organization, people are always trying to drag you down into petty politics. The way I see it, I don’t have the time or additional space in my short-term memory to be concerned about fraternity politics so I try my damnedest to stay out of that bullshit.

But like I said – this is my first time to the Danvers-Boston area and I’m looking forward to seeing the sites. Also, the hotel has a pool so I’m looking forward to going for a few dips before the activity starts each day. Hey, I won’t have my Wii Fit Plus available to help get me moving, but I’m going to attempt to keep the momentum going anyway!

I’ve arranged for a few entries to automatically upload to the site while I’m gone, so have no fear about this place being a dead zone for a few days.

Removing Distractions and Focusing on Getting Down to Business

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Next Wednesday I’m heading to Danvers, Massachusetts for my fraternity’s 50th Biennial Convocation. If you’re not in my fraternity – or any other fraternity for that matter – this is our organization’s national convention which takes place every other year. For the last three conventions I’ve walked away with a major volunteer award (either the #1 local volunteer in the nation or the #1 regional volunteer in the nation). This year I’m ineligible for those awards since I was elected to a higher level volunteer position that does not have an award associated with it. No biggie – I’ve been extremely busy in the two years since the last convention and that’s the focus of this entry.

Sometimes we can get distracted from the important goals that we are each trying to reach in life. For some folks, those goals are big, grandiose accomplishments like climbing Mount Everest, losing 100 pounds, flying an airplane, etc. For others, those important goals are as seemingly simple as purchasing a new telephone, being sure to attend Church on a weekly basis, showing up to work on time, or even having a job to go to show up to in the morning. The point is that each person has their own objectives that they’re trying to reach.

Recently, I realized that I was becoming more and more distracted by insignificant people, places, and things. These insignificant distractions – on there own – are nothing out of the ordinary. However, combined they put a person in a bad spot where they can’t move forward. Here are some examples of what was distracting me:

  • Clients that don’t get it. I’ve mentioned this annoyance before on this blog, but some of my website clients don’t understand what my small business’ role is in their overall internet presence. For example, some of my clients think that it’s perfectly acceptable for me to create a website for them and then – two months later – completely redesign their website because their tastes have changed. These types of clients are clueless and abusive and I’m shedding them from my portfolio. In the grand scheme of things, their inability to make a decision should be – and now, in many cases, is – insignificant in my world.
  • Dumb cell phone games. My current and former roommate can tell you that I was nearly addicted to playing BrickBreaker a few months ago. I mean it was crazy! I’d play that stupid game on my cell phone while I was at work, waiting in traffic, sitting trying to watch television, at the restaurant, you name it! I was consumed with scoring 1,000,000+ points (which I did) that I wasted a bunch of time in the process! Talk about something insignificant getting in the way of getting work done!
  • Stupid television. This is interesting because I don’t really watch much television other than a few shows that I DVR. Sometimes, I put the television in my bedroom on as background noise while I work on my laptop, but I don’t “watch” whatever is on the screen (typically a news channel like FOX News). In the last week I’ve kept the cable box off more and missing whatever dumb talking heads are on the television certainly could be the very definition of insignificant.

The reason that I emphasized the words cable box in the last point is because I’ve been keeping the television on so I can do some more working out on my Wii Fit. In fact, removing each of the insignificant activities listed above has allowed me to do something else that is more important. Less talking heads = more time working out. Less BrickBreaker = completing more tasks at the office and advancing my work overall. Less whacked out clients = more time to spend on teaching an online course.

Sure, there are a lot of other things that I’ve cut out of my daily routine and by doing so I’ve created more time to focus on the things that matter. However, I’m not going to list them all here because then I might be wasting your time!

Back From Nashville – Lots Going on This Week, Next Week, and Beyond!

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This past Friday, I woke up at 4 o’clock in the morning to get ready for a quick, whirlwind trip down to Nashville. I was on New Jersey Transit by 5:30am, at the airport by 7:00am, in the air by 9:30am, and taking in beautiful Nashville, Tennessee by 10:30am (that’s Central Time, which would have been 11:30am Eastern Time). The purpose of the trip was to attend an Operations Committee meeting of the Sigma Pi Educational Foundation, of which I am a Board Trustee. In fact, the schedule was so expertly prepared that my fellow Committee members and I were walking through our office space in Nashville by 12:30pm and in our first meeting by 1:00pm.

Sigma Pi Educational Foundation Logo

The Sigma Pi Educational Foundation

In the 30 or so hours that I was in Nashville, my fellow Committee members and I met with the Foundation’s auditor, lawyer, bankers, staff, and a nonprofit management consultant. All of it was very informative and I’m glad that I decided to make the trip (at first, I thought that making a 30 hour trip to Nashville couldn’t possibly be worth the hassle, but I was wrong) – I would definitely make the same type of trip again. Anyone out there reading this who serves as a Board member for a nonprofit organization knows that these types of trips can be a huge disaster if they are unproductive and not properly planned. I’m glad that I serve on the Board of a nonprofit organization that has such a great Chief Operations Officer (our only full-time employee) who planned such a productive weekend schedule. Great work!

Oh, and to wrap up the time frame for the whirlwind trip to Nashville, I was back in my townhouse in Tinton Falls by 10:15pm on Saturday night. No big unpacking and cleaning after the trip either since I only had a small carry-on bag with me for the entire trip. Quick and efficient!

Now that I’m back in New Jersey, though, I’m looking at my upcoming schedule and I didn’t realize how jam packed it was for the rest of this month. Actually, over the last few days I’ve been making plans as far ahead as November 2010. Not that I mind – I think it’s good to know your schedule well in advance (yes, even months in advance).

How are your schedules coming along? Does anyone else out there plan themselves weeks and months in advance or do most of you just wing it? I always wondered about how most people plan their days, weeks, and months. Hmmm… I bet there’s a study out there somewhere that I can download to read some research about the issue. Of course, I’m not sure if I have the time for that… 😉

Before I finish up for the day, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that if anyone is looking for a great, extremely efficient nonprofit organization to donate any amount from $1 to $1,000 (or more) to, the Sigma Pi Educational Foundation is the right choice. I know many of my readers are financially savvy and know the tax planning benefits of making tax deductible donations to 501(c)3 nonprofit organizations, so consider the Sigma Pi Educational Foundation the next time you’re putting together your tax planning donations. And don’t worry, we have a variety of funds that you can donate to that benefit folks outside of Sigma Pi Fraternity, including a fund for disabled veterans that awards some great scholarships to even better people each year. Something to consider…