I need more hours in the day!!

We had a sprint retrospective last week and our PO added a note to the 'Things I would like to have' category. He wanted more hours in the day! It probably reflected the amount of work that he had to do. As a team we laughed at his note and asked if he would like us to slow down the speed of Earth's rotation. In retrospective (ironic, yes I know) I probably should have asked for an explanation on his note. I should have tried to find out if there was something that we could do to reduce his work load. I will remember to raise this in the next retrospective.

Of late I have been having the same feeling. I have so many things that I want to do that I just cant find time to finish all of them. The list of things to do keeps getting longer and longer. Of course the list includes work related stuff as well as professional development stuff. To try and manage my list better I have started to add post its on my wall under different columns for different kinds of work. I have even used different coloured post its for different columns.

This is helping me identify what is important and what needs to be done first. This in effect is my personal Kanban board. By the way, the above pic was taken after I removed a lot of post its simply because the columns were getting too long!

However it is not lack of organisation that is the problem here. The problem is that I simply want to do too many things in a short span of time. Its time to slow down and identify what I really want to do, not forgetting that I have family to take care of too. This obviously means that I cannot complete all tasks on my lists but on the bright side I will complete some of the tasks that have been ongoing for some time.

I wonder how everyone else manages their work life balance? Don't forget to add the element of self improvement to this equation. Be it professional improvement or personal improvement.

The reason I am writing this post is that no matter how much I try to organise my time efficiently, there will always be something that has to take precedence and something that has to be taken off the list. This is not necessarily a bad thing but something to be aware of. If there are others out there who have the same problem as me, have solace in the fact that you are not alone.

I am rambling as usual.....time to get back to work as lunch break is now officially over!