I would like some suggestions for the smallest, tiny baby step I can take to start Monday Hour one. I have been crashing and burning on this for the last three months. I actually joined scholars because of learning about Monday Hour One, because I’ve struggled with managing time my whole life. Even though I’m considered a high performer at work, I end up working long days and weekends. It always took me a long time to do homework as a student and in my personal life it feels like I just have enough time to work, cook and keep my house tidy. I have friends who are single mothers who manage to have more demanding jobs, travel, bake, have hobbies and I’m struggling just to do my job and keep my house clean. And I’m a single woman with no kids, pets or husband. I have so much time and I waste all of it because things seem to take me longer to do. I get interrupted with distractions, I am not organized and I literally throw my time away because I’m caught up in overthinking, being distracted or not being organized. Even this message is disorganized! Lol!

But I’m still having so much resistance to establishing this habit in my life.

I am feeling jealous of the Scholars on the Monday Hour one calls and “Ask a Coach“ who talk about how much it’s helped them. I want that too!

I tried doing it in my electronic Outlook calendar at work but I get distracted and go into overthinking loops. I can barely get a day or two in. Then, I tried using a paper calendar and again I can get a day or two planned. But even for the days I’ve planned, things pop up during the day that cause me to have to reshuffle my day. I know I don’t “have” to do anything 🙂 but I feel compelled to choose to responding to requests from my Director because not doing so would have consequences I prefer to avoid.

I used some of my 20 minute coaching to get support and one recommendation was just to plan out one day at a time until I got used to it. This helps a little bit and I can keep up with that for a day or two, until I end up working really late and being tired and not feeling like planning my next day because I already put in a 12 hour day.

I feel like a tremendous failure with how I manage my time. And I am still failing. I think part of me doesn’t believe anything will help. I find myself struggling with making decisions about what tasks I should put in what time-slot, overthinking about what are the best task to go where and even being concerned about how messy my handwriting is going to look in my new planner. It’s all just really depressing, infuriating and demoralizing. I’m starting to question if I just threw good money after bad by enrolling in Scholars because I still can’t figure this out.

I know it sounds like I think I am at the effect of the circumstances and it does feel that way. I am at the effect of my unconscious beliefs and behaviors that are screwing me up. I think that I just need a very small, tiny step I can take to build up some trust and confidence in myself.

When I try to come up with thoughts about how I can trust myself or have my own back, I don’t believe it. It feels like bullshit. I need something really easy so I can prove to myself I’m trustworthy. I recall the example about believing new things, where you can’t go from” I hate my body“ to “I love my body“ but you can agree that you have a body. I need something like that. Because right now, being ineffective at managing my time for so long, the evidence proving that thought appears insurmountable.