12 annoying things about me

Posted on 1/1/2007 by Alice
  1. I work too much. Why do I do it? Is it that I care more about work than anything else around me? Surely I don’t like work more than I like my friends and my relationships and doing things that I want, like writing and exploring the world. Can it be that when looking at all the ways I could spend my time, I would rather do things that mostly people don’t do unless someone pays them? Tom Peters posted this a while back:

    ALL THERE IS. Damn it! I keep forgetting this! Leaving it out of presentations! Namely, a PP slide that simply reads : You = Your Calendar. THIS IS MY #1 BELIEF ABOUT MANAGEMENT. Or: “You can’t bullshit your calendar.” Or: “Your calendar knows … do you?” All we have is our time. The way we distribute it is our “strategic plan,” our “vision,” our “values.” Period. So how’d you spend your precious time today? Tell me, and I’ll tell you what you actually care about—it’s simple and unerring.

    I get the idea here. It’s not a startling new concept. You can say you care about a lot of things, but what do you actually spend your time on? But sometimes, what you spend your time on doesn’t reflect what you care about most. It says that you’re disorganized or too busy to prioritize correctly or your time gets pre-empted a lot. And sometimes, it is a bit true. I do like my work and it doesn’t really seem like work to me and I also like liking my work. It’s somewhat of a circular situation: I don’t want to go back to a job I don’t like (even though that would mean I’d have a lot more time), but being in a job I do like means that I like to do it a lot, at the expense of the rest.

  2. I like bad music.
  3. I can be a disorganized mess. When I read through my archives here, I see a recurring theme. I can’t get organized. I keep thinking that if I buy just one more self-help book, I’ll break through. But it hasn’t happened yet.
  4. I like potatoes way too much. I could eat potatoes at every meal. Often, I do.
  5. I like being independent. I don’t like being told what to do and I don’t like not having control. I’m more a leader than a follower. Which is fine in leading-type situations, but not so great in team and relationship-stype situations. I actually do very well with collaboration, but deep down, if you don’t agree with me, I mostly think that you’re wrong. I try to be open-minded and take in all the facts before making decisions, but once I’ve made a decision, it’s difficult for me to be swayed another direction. I’m judgemental and stubborn and probably not as flexible as I like to think I am.
  6. I make a terrible mess in the kitchen. When I’m cooking, I use every bowl and utensil I own and ingredients end up everywhere and the place becomes a disaster zone. I clean everything up after, though.
  7. I’m not virtuous.
  8. I get distracted easily. I’m a power multi-tasker and it’s difficult for me to concentrate on doing just one thing at a time. So, if I’m stuck doing one thing, I get bored. But if I’m doing too many things at once, I tend to wander off and forget about some of them. Possibly this contributes to my organization problem. At work, for instance, I’m constantly opening new tabs in my browser, and I need to do something with all of them, but at the end of the day, I find that I’ve managed to forget about half of them. It’s a problem.
  9. I can get really bitchy sometimes. And mean. I amaze myself with my own meanness. I’m mostly a very nice person, but then I hit my limit and the bitchiness takes over. It’s not pretty.
  10. I get depressed when I fail.
  11. I can’t sing at all. So much so that P. won’t let me sing around him. Even when I’m in the car and shouldn’t everyone get to sing in the car?
  12. I make a lot of lists.
This entry was posted in Life. Bookmark the permalink.

Comments are closed.