Meltdown

Last Saturday I had a small meltdown, I missed the train back home by just 5 minutes and I snapped off a little via twitter.

I got up at 6:30, missed my niece’s christening & my nephew’s birthday and spent 50 euros to be at the meeting today… definitely couch day

— Javier Gamarra (@nhpatt) May 6, 2017

Obviously, it was all my fault… I definitely should host/attend way fewer meetups and conferences. In those 2 weeks I went to Paris to a Liferay conference, to gave a badly prepared talk (due to previous compromises), Victor hosted one event on Thursday and I returned early from Paris to host another event (CrossDevelopment) on Saturday. I had a course and the Agile Spain meetup the next week.

3 hosting compromises, one talk and one course (both outside my comfort zone). I’m stretched way too thin. To redouble in my mistakes, the previous week I had a course in Sevilla, the jsday.es conference and 2 hosting compromises, plus 2 courses and 2 hosting compromises this week.

But completely missing the point and the lesson I should learn, I wasn’t frustrated because of having way too many events, I was frustrated because, in my mind, I could have prevented everything…

• If I had reviewed the calendar I wouldn’t have moved the Agile Spain meetup and instead I would have canceled/moved the CrossDevelopment one that forced me to return early from Paris (and embroil my wife’s calendar too) and I could have stayed more time in Paris and attend the family events.
• If I hadn’t attended the Agile Spain meetup, I could have prepared the budgets or connected via hangout and attend all the family events.
• If I had just spoken in the Agile Spain meetup and told the attendees that I should take the 18:00 train to attend a birthday (after missing a christening) I could have gone to my nephew’s birthday

Instead, I didn’t review the calendar nor I said anything in the meetup…

Again missing the point with those ifs. I have to understand that I can’t do all the things I would like to do.

It’s rather easy to look back and try to fit everything in your agenda once a week has passed. It’s impossible to fit everything before. I don’t have any slack time.

I watched Henrik Kniberg’s talk, slack, some months ago but I resist to believe it. I do know that I can’t sustain this rhythm much more (luckily after the lechazoconf I don’t have anything else planned).

If I don’t set hard numeric limits (like hosting 3 events a month) I am not going to change, I need numbers to take compromises seriously. But I resist setting hard limits because I know that if I set one I’m going to try to follow it and internally I don’t want to change.

So much fun… what should I do?

Image by halfrain