What to do next

For as long as I have been in the IT profession, my best work has been produced from the ideas of other people. Tell me what needs doing, and I’ll do it. Typically I’ll do it well, and with a great attention to detail.

Leave me to my own devices, and I’ll struggle to determine what needs doing, and then what the priorities are.

This morning I found myself thinking that I could do with someone to tell me how to live my life. Discovering and embracing an autism spectrum disorder may well be wonderfully liberating and it has certainly answered a lot of questions, but it is leaving me feeling as though I don’t know where my life is going all too often.

Today is one of those days. Wouldn’t it be great if someone would come along and just tell me that now I have to do this. And when I’m finished with that, I should then do this – and so on.

Instead I feel stressed, anxious and bewildered. My to-do list tells me the things I have to try and get done today, but what do I need to do to get my life on track next week, next month, next year?

I don’t know.

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4 Comments to “What to do next”

  1. Saja 18 August 2009 at 14:26  (Quote) #

    I know what you mean. A while back I wrote a post about how great it would be to hire someone to *manage* the household. I don’t particularly need someone to do the actual cleaning and all (and they never meet my standards, anyway)–I just need someone to manage it all, you know, keep up with all the dates of things and what needs to be done, and leave me daily, prioritized to-do lists. Still wish I could get someone like that….

    Reply
  2. Soph 19 August 2009 at 05:56  (Quote) #

    Not necessarily. They might be so organised with their to do lists that they completely overwhelm you. :-)

    Reply
    • Saja 19 August 2009 at 06:38  (Quote) #

      Oh, that’s a good point! I’m imagining short little lists, but if there were forty things on it, and some of them involved phone calls and other social endeavors, well, you’re right, I’d be totally overwhelmed. :-)

      Reply
  3. James 19 August 2009 at 09:32  (Quote) #

    Soph and Saja,

    I don’t really need someone to micro-manage me – I’m quite adept at producing my own to-do lists these days, with a quantity of tasks on it that suites my ability to deliver without overwhelming me.

    What I could do with is someone to point me in the right sort of general direction – i.e. seeing the ‘bigger picture’ that I so often miss and have written about before.

    My wife does some of this, of course, but not everything.

    Reply

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