One of my goals for the year was to be involved in less. As of last night, having stepped down from my four-year post as the VA Director at the DC Road Runners annual banquet, I think I can safely say I have achieved it.
While I’m still busy as hell between two jobs and trying to workout ~10 hours a week, every little bit helps. I don’t know exactly how much free time I’ve bought myself by resigning (especially since I’ll still be helping out a bit, but gone are the self-imposed requirements), but I’ll give it a go:
- Six bi-monthly board meetings. Due to their timing, they define my evening after work despite only being an hour long. 6-9PM = 3 hours * 6 = 18 hours saved.
- Scoring sixteen races for championship standings. These take roughly an hour each. 16 more hours to me.
- Helping out at races. I will still do this, but perhaps not as much as before. ~8 hours back in my pocket.
- Communicating. Just going through e-mails, even if they don’t require a response takes time. ~2 hours.
Total time saved? We’ll round up to 45 hours. A negligible amount compared to what some of the other volunteers put in, but it’s time that I haven’t been wanting to put in for a year or two… Especially once I stopped defining myself as a runner due to many years of injury and not being able to train or compete well.
That’s the beefy win. I’ve had a couple of others such as no longer receiving notifications of Facebook activity from my top few friends, tracking less of my life (keeping detailed logs of coffee beans, wine we drink, games I play, and much more), reducing the number of times I visit “my forums” during the day, and saying “no” more often.
Overall, my stress levels are down and I’m digging it. To be clear, I’ve never had the “pulling out my hair” stress, but the “I have less than no time to get all this done” stress, which I think I handle in stride by prioritizing and keeping organized, but now I feel I’m at least able to stay on top of everything that’s going on. I’m still busy pretty much 100% of my waking hours (I’d have it no other way), but my backlog is actually decreasing and it’s a great feeling.
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