Of all the skills I’ve learnt and honed while freelancing, balancing multiple projects is probably one of the biggest. It’s not just the logistics of when to book in meetings and how to schedule work to meet deadlines, but the mental gymnastics it takes. Coming out of a meeting on one project to launch into a coaching session with an entirely different focus. Going from a sales pitch to a professional development workshop, constantly adjusting your style and focus for different purposes and audiences.
These last few weeks have been a particularly good example of this challenge. My workload across the month includes:
- Coaching two individual clients
- Pro bono mentoring for another as a volunteer
- Running an action learning set pro bono for colleagues
- Delivering workshops at a national conference
- Facilitating an all-staff strategy workshop
- Facilitating an event to support a new project teams’ ways of working
- Facilitating an event to support the long-term future of a national social good programme
- Facilitating a LEGO® SeriousPlay® session to support a local charity’s future planning
Keeping multiple projects in the air is a real skill, progressing each one at the right time in the way and ideally never to the detriment of others.
In amongst this, we are celebrating my daughter’s birthday and saying goodbye to a family member. It’s a tough juxtaposition of looking forward and grieving for the past. It’s taken the need to compartmentalise to a whole new level and highlighted the messiness of life – that boundaries are aways what we should aim for, but the reality can be a bit fuzzy.
While I’ve tried to hold onto good habits of prioritising sleep, hydration, exercise, decent food, less screen time and connecting with people, an incoming chest infection suggests I need a weekend of minimal commitments other than a date with the sofa. Mother’s day is on Sunday here in the UK so I think I might actually get my wish, potentially with chocolate too…
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash