Managing my time

This is a lifelong challenge for most of us. I see my kids struggle with it, my friends and colleagues, and of course myself.

Coffee is one of my routines. I look
forward to coffee at about 9.30 and
3.30 each day. The other day I was
out at 3.30 and in a rush, so I bought
a coffee from a convenience store.
Not bad, either!

Last week a friend called me about our Saturday plans. She asked how I was and I told her I was in the midst of a crazy week where some bigger things had all landed on my desk at once. I had several Zoom meetings, for two of them I had to spend significant time preparing information to present. On top of that the prayer booklet that I've been working on was finally printed and there was a flurry of activity surrounding that, including a trip into town to sign thank you cards for contributors. In the same week we were doing final proofreading for the Winter issue of the magazine, something that only happens four times a year, but last week it collided with these other things.

My friend said, "Wow Wendy, that's quite a bit of juggling!"

I said, "I usually juggle quite a lot, and manage it fairly well, even enjoy it; but this week is a bit over the top." 

I have several job titles, including OMF Japan Social Media manager, Japan Harvest Managing Editor, and Website responder. Now added to that is Pre Home Assignment Workshop facilitator. Most of the time I love it. I love variety and hate boredom, this collection of jobs suits me well and most of time I can make them fit well with one another.

What do I use to keep me organised?

• Asana.com (see my post about that here). This keeps me on track with deadlines in my publishing work (I usually have dozens of deadlines  in any given month).
• A running list on my phone where I tick off (US=check off) the items as they're done through the day, this saves me when I remember I need to do something later and because I nearly always have my phone nearby, it's brilliant. I used to use PostIt notes, but they aren't nearly so convenient.
• A calendar next to my computer and one in my handbag. Yes, I'm a physical calendar kind of girl. Not so good for keeping track of Zoom meeting links, but I haven't had many of those to deal with on a regular basis.

This next list is not so much tools for time management, but more helping with organising multiple bits in projects: when it comes to organising publishing work, I use a variety of other tools, including: 

• Trello (a collaboration tool for organising projects, particularly useful for working in a remote team, we use it for social media planning)
• Google docs: sheets is a particularly helpful way to lay out content such as a publishing schedule or a list of articles for a magazine, in a way that is easy to understand and for others to access.
• Dropbox: I use this extensively when working with files that others need to access, such as other magazine team members.
• Social media scheduling tools (yes there are such things, and I only use them for work, not my personal account): Buffer, Hootsuite, and just today I'm starting to try out a new one called "Later". But I'm still searching for the "perfect" one, any suggestions welcome!

Yes, it's complicated, but I wouldn't be able to do these jobs efficiently without these tools to help me stay on top of things. These tools also help me to relax when I'm not working: I know that I don't have to hold everything in my head, that I'm probably not going to forget important things, because they are recorded in a place that will remind me.

Routines also help me, though my weeks aren't tightly scheduled because I dislike being over-regulated.

What do you use to help you stay organised? Everyone has different responsibilities and a different style. Mine certainly has changed over the years as my boys have needed me less. Different people tolerate different levels of disorganisation and some thrive on being last-minute people. Others, like me, like a certain level of unpredictability, but don't enjoy being panicked.

Not able to make plans yet

This year has been one filled with pain for many. One particular struggle has been the uncertainty and difficulty in making plans. We've had it relatively easy compared to some other cross-cultural workers (we know some who've been stuck in countries where they'd rather not be), we had no "big" plans for the year. That is:

• we'd not planned to go on home assignment, or return to the field
• none of our boys have been in the middle of a major educational transition
• we were settled in a good location and had work we could do regardless of the conditions around us
• we had no major travel plans disrupted 
• we got to take our annual summer holidays as planned in July

Of course there have been many disappointments: 

• our son in Australia has not been able to visit us as he'd planned
• school was online for several months 
• lots of other things have been cancelled or radically changed

This blog post in 2015 was answering questions we were dealing with back then about how our eldest son would be transitioning to Australia. We had big, bold, audacious plans! Surprisingly, most of them came to be.

Somewhat random photo, taken during my time in the park
on Friday as I pondered some of the things I've written in 
this post.

This time round, with our middle son graduating (Lord willing) in June of next year, we've got a clearer idea of some things, and, for a couple of reasons, a much foggier idea of others. Who said it gets easier?

Five years ago I wrote that blog post while we were on home assignment, partly out of frustration at having to repeatedly explain things (but I’m not sure it helped much as most of those who asked weren’t reading this blog). 

The challenge we have is that Australians don’t understand the American schooling system our boys are in and most people we encounter in Japan don’t understand the Australian schooling system. Add to that the challenge of having to negotiate the journey of your kids transitioning to adult lives when you’re not working in your passport country. Plus the fact that these kids have lived most of their lives overseas and have almost no friends in their passport country.

All these things add extra layers to such a time in life. The natural result is lots of discussion and plans. David and I love a real-life puzzle and we love planning, but this puzzle has too many pieces that aren’t even in the box yet.

One thing I’ve been struggling with is that the natural question to ask people at this stage of life is about those plans. The thing I’ve found is that most people would like to hear a neat, ABC plan. But what if you don’t have a neat “ABC” plan? What if your “plan” looks like a bunch of squiggles that don’t make much sense? What if your plans look more like a bunch of possibilities and maybes, than anything concrete? That makes for awkward conversation. It also leads to worry. At the moment, my challenge it is to trust God in all this. To “be still and know that he is God”.

I’m reading Sword Fighting: Applying God's word to win the battle for our mind by Christine Dillon, a friend of mine. She’s asked me to write a review when I’m done, but I’m not finished the book yet. However, the other day it was good to read the chapter about worry. Thinking about the story of Abraham and Sarah—God had promised them they would have children, but they’d had none thus far and were getting older. So Sarah came up with a plan, which turned out to be a bad plan, not God’s plan. 

I don’t want to be like that. I don’t want to “help God out” by coming up with a plan that isn’t in line with his plans. But sitting still and trusting God is hard. And talking to people who enquire about the plans of our son who is in year 12 just highlights how many ifs and buts there are. It also seems that for people of our age, suggesting post-school plans for teenagers is a particularly enjoyable/tempting thing to do? We've been on the receiving end of so much well-meaning advice and suggestions, but . . . it hasn't necessarily helped me in waiting on God.

I’m reminded of the passage in Ecclesiastes 3 that begins “There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven.” I reckon this fits (though there's no actual verse that says this): “There’s a time to make plans and there’s a time to wait.” Right now, for us, it’s time to wait, and trust in the Lord with all our hearts, leaning not on our own understanding and God will direct our paths (paraphrase from Proverbs 3:5-6).

This is getting to be a long post. But as I've thought about this over the last few days, God has been working in me. Yesterday I looked up "wait" in the Bible. It occurs many times, but here are a couple that are relevant to our current situation:

"In the morning, Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly" (Psalm 5:3 NIV).

Indeed, we've been laying our requests before the Lord many, many mornings. We also need to wait expectantly for his answers (which may not come quickly).

"I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, in his word I put my hope" (Psalm 130:5).

Yesterday we also were privileged to hear a Japanese missionary from Wycliffe speak on Psalm 13. 

How long, Lord? Will you forget me for ever?

How long will you hide your face from me?

How long must I wrestle with my thoughts

and day after day have sorrow in my heart?

How long will my enemy triumph over me?

Look on me and answer, Lord my God.

Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,

and my enemy will say, ‘I have overcome him,’

and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

But I trust in your unfailing love;

my heart rejoices in your salvation.

I will sing the Lord’s praise,

for he has been good to me. 

He pointed out that this was probably written later in David's life, as he reflected on the many struggles he'd had in his life. Verse 3 is David's prayer: that he would have "light" or understanding, that he would be able to see God in the midst of the struggles. 

The preacher also took a little detour to talk about the phrase "it came to pass". It's a common phrase in older versions of the English Bible. In modern translations it is often translated as "after that" or "one day". But he pondered what God might be saying to us through this Hebrew phrase and thought it might be a reminder that these things haven't come to stay. That no matter what you're going through it will pass—keep your eyes on heaven.

I'm praying that I'll have wisdom to deal with conversations that encourage me to worry, and more conversations that point me to trusting and waiting on God. And that God will enable us to sit with these current uncertainties and trust him to work it all out. 

Hundreds and Thousands Slice

Most of us have favourite food memories from childhood. It's amazing how those memories stick with you. I love it that many of the sweet recipes I make have connections to various people who've been in my life over the years.

This is a recipe that my mum frequently made. I haven't made it so often over the years because coconut isn't the easiest product to source in Japan, but I've got some at the moment (thanks to iHerb), so I made these on the weekend. Yum!

Ingredients

½ cup (120g) butter

1 cup (210g) brown sugar

1 egg

1 cup (130g) SR flour (For non-Aussies, this is self raising flour and has baking powder included in it, very convenient!) If you arent' in Australia, just add a teaspoon of baking powder as well as the flour. For my Japan-based friends, I used "medium flour" or 中力小麦粉.

½ cup (50g) desiccated coconut

2 tablespoons of cocoa (20 ml spoons)

dash of vanilla essence

Icing

2 tablespoons cocoa

1 cup (130g) icing sugar 

3 (15g) teaspoons butter

1 tablespoon boiling water

hundreds and thousands

Method

1. Cream butter and sugar.

2. Add egg.

3. Add flour, coconut, cocoa, and vanilla.

4. Mix well (semi-dry mixture).

5. Spread evenly into a greased/baking paper-lined tin. I used a 23cm x 23cm tin.

6. Cook in a moderate oven for 20 minutes (about 170 or 180˚C depending on how fast your oven is).

7. Just before it finishes baking, mix icing ingredients together (except hundreds and thousands).

8. Ice while hot. Sprinkle hundreds and thousands on top.

9. Cut into squares when cold.

Curve-ball kind of week

 After a slow week at work last week, the burners were turned up this week. (You can often tell by how many blog posts I’ve written...in a slow week I write more, busy week, I don’t often get to write at all).

My working week ended with a pretty
cool sunset. This was the best I could
get from my balcony.

Last weekend the first curve ball landed of my week landed when two siblings at school were diagnosed with COVID. None of our family had close contact with either student while not wearing a mask (the main thing they consider in Japan), however they did “shut down” the two grades those students were in for the week and that meant one of our boys was back to online schooling. As my husband is on the leadership team at school I also heard a few bits and pieces as the week went on, as various circles of contact were tested and eventually cleared (that’s right, no one at school caught the virus from these two students). I’m pretty impressed—Japanese contact testing is thorough and well organized.

I spent Monday on the other side of Tokyo with some of my Kanto OMF colleagues. David got to come too, which was a lovely treat (although we tried not to talk on the 2.5 hrs we spent on trains...that’s one of the COVID guidelines here). 

As usual, it was great to spend time with colleagues. We even got to stay an extra hour and play games. That was both challenging and fun. I ended up being drawn into a Japanese language game that’s a bit like Taboo and surprised myself by not doing too bad. Actually “guessing” is a big part of my survival strategy in Japanese language, so I suppose it shouldn’t be such a surprise that I did alright. But I still ended up the day with a bad headache, traveling on public transport and being with people all day while wearing masks is not as  easy as it used to be.

When I got back to my desk on Tuesday I found a pile of work bigger than I’d expected, that was the next cluster of curve-balls. We’re into the design-phase of the Winter issue of the magazine and I thought I’d finished the hard-lifting editing last Friday. However one article came back from an author with some major changes. I also had to do some fast writing to extend one article I’d written, to better fill the space we had available (we had less content than we’d needed to fill the 40-page magazine).

Managing a magazine has lots of behind-the-scenes stuff that I never imagined. The most surprising to me is how tricky it can be to get just the right amount of content. That involves juggling many things, from word count and images, to actually where articles are placed in the magazine, not to mention ads.

So Tuesday was a busy day at the office. 

On Wednesday the next curve ball arrived, and it was in the form of a request to create a PowerPoint presentation for the content I’d be helping present on Friday morning for an orientation for new missionaries. The pressure mounted as I’d already agreed to help out an expat friend all Wednesday afternoon, and Thursday was fully booked with parent-teacher conferences, at school and other errands that needed doing.

By Thursday morning I was feeling pretty exhausted. I ended up having to reschedule an appointment (not because I was tired), but that gave me some extra wriggle room for getting things done. After dinner on Thursday night David had to go back to school to see more parents for conferences and I nearly fell asleep at 7.30 in my chair!

Friday was more sane. We did the orientation session just before lunch and it seemed to go well, despite our lack of experience at delivering training via Zoom (they were all in one room, but my colleague and I were in our own homes). That gave me Friday afternoon to tidy up a lot of the loose ends from earlier in the week. I got to the end of yesterday feeling both exhausted and satisfied. And very thankful for a quiet weekend coming up and that no further curve balls arrived on Friday!

How was your week? I’m still learning to go with the flow—to enjoy the times when the demands of my job and time and energy available are about equal. The difficulty I have is to not get too stressed when the demands exceed the time and energy I have available and not to overthink when I’ve got more time and energy available than the job demands.