Jumping through hoops



Take time for the most important things.

I was once told that “People are not an interruption of our work, they are our work.” This was in reference to all the phone calls, extra questions, broken appliances and other things that interrupted the scheduled work in a busy medical office. It was a reminder that although we had tasks to complete, those tasks were for the patients coming to our office to receive services.  We were in the business of treating people, not things.

This is not so different from our daily lives.  Why do we do all those THINGS that somehow encumber us from day to day?  I described my day yesterday as one spent jumping through hoops.  This simply means I was tending to tasks that had to be done, yet seemed an interruption of things that I thought were truly important.  Some of those hoops, were just that – required busy work.  However, some of the interruptions were directly related to individuals’ needs.  At the end of the day I thought, “I didn’t get anything done today!”  I took a moment to evaluate the day and realized that some very important things had, indeed, been accomplished.  Some of those things directly involved people and their needs while others, like registering my automobile, indirectly served individuals. (It’s a long story, but it required two trips to the DMV 20 miles away.)

It is important to keep in mind that the laundry, the dishes, and the bill paying, are all a service of some sort.  They seem like busy work that needs to be done, but someone needs clean clothes and food on the table and a legally driven vehicle.

It is also important to keep in mind that although completing the busy work might be a worthy goal for the day, sometimes people and their immediate needs will interrupt us.  Don’t forget that they are your true work.  Without them, all the other stuff wouldn't matter.