As soon as I DID join the team, it was crazy going.
Hurry, hurry, hurry – do this, do that, and whatever you do, hurry (with some
raising of the voice along the way – and I don’t mean MINE)! Today it dawned on
me, as I was thinking about Loraine and her modus operandi - bouncing from
crisis to crisis – that she is a perfect example for where NOT to be in the
Stephen R. Covey paradigm! In the widely-applicable
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People matrix you have ‘Important-Not
important’ running along the top, with ‘Urgent-Not urgent’ down the side. Loraine operates in the ‘stay out of this
quadrant at all costs’ mode – urgent and important – pretty much every other
day or so – right where 90% of the population erroneously spends their time, so
I guess she’s in good company. Ideally, when your life is in balance, you can
stay out of that sphere altogether, and ultimately not have to bring others
there along with you! The idea is to be proactive – to not let the
circumstances of the day rule YOU. I’d gift her with Covey’s book in a
heartbeat if I thought she’d ever find a moment to read it. I know it would
change her life and the atmosphere of this hotel.
Oh, those new chambermaids! It may be too early to
make this assessment but I am sad to say that their lack of attention to detail
is appalling. Even when I make gentle suggestions to help improve the quality
of service, they go right on doing it the same way they did it before. They do not
possess ONE iota of – shall we call it – finesse. Stacey says with time they will
become more polished. I dunno – can you develop that attribute or is it an
inborn characteristic?
After a mad whiz-bang day (thankfully there are
now more staff in so I didn’t feel like I had to take it all onto my shoulders
– happily, rather, to be just another cog in the wheel), was able to attend my
very first Enrichment Night since arriving in England and got enriched on the
subject of finances. Most of the lesson was taken from the church’s website on ‘provident
living.’ It was obvious how very important the helps the church makes available
are greatly appreciated outside the Wasatch Front and taken advantage of. We
were admonished once again – half away around the world – to distinguish
between our wants and our needs, to not let family expenditures be ‘governed more
by yearning than by earning.’ (Each of us can always make use that reminder!)
On the subject of putting aside savings, one
sister remarked that she has learned that if you don’t put money away
immediately, as soon as you receive your pay check, it will have evaporated by
the time the month comes to the end and there will be nothing left to save. At
the same time, when it is done in the beginning of the pay cycle, you don’t
seem to miss it and the bills STILL get paid! It is an interesting concept –
very similar to how the use of time seems to work. When we got onto the subject
of the help modern technology can give, Liz Kagi, a teacher like Leah, told what
a great time saver for her ordering her groceries from her iPhone has been in
her busy world. (What – ordering groceries via a store’s internet site?!
Something many could appreciate in America, huh?!)
What a teeny group we had – only eight of us, but
it was nice, you know, as I knew every person there. Sure glad I went! One
sister brought a potato casserole, plus baked beans (always from the can –
never homemade. We would call it pork and beans without the ‘pork,’ otherwise
just the same – though ours has even MORE sugar than theirs. The Relief Society
President brought cookies to decorate for Valentine’s Day – and eat! Another
sister in the presidency brought some butternut squash (no cream . . . and NO
salt) and some dark chocolate cookie bar things. What a feast – and for just
showing up!
[It is around 10pm, I am in my bedroom, which is
directly across the hallway from the bathroom. I can hear Chloe in there talking to her imaginary friends, doing
exactly the routine I did with her on the third floor this afternoon – ‘first
find 1, then 2, 3, etc.’ I’d had this great Fawlty Towers silliness to get the
weekend going – to put floral pillowcases for the bottom tier in the boys’
bedrooms. Haha. (I thought that was such a clever idea until somebody told me
that last year they’d had ALL floral bedding, and nobody had even noticed – as
far as they knew. Oh, well . . .) Anyway, with permission I had taken Chloe
with me (poor little thing, left on her own to keep herself occupied for much
of the day) up to the third floor of the hotel where a single, central lobby
separates the six bedrooms (unlike other floors that have long narrow
hallways); the numbering is 301-306. I was getting her to use her number skills
by asking, ‘now, look at the room numbers; where is this number, then that?” So
there she was, repeating the scenario – cute, like a child pretends to have
school.]
Photos_
1- Stephen Covey & The Matrix
In his bestseller The 7 Habits of Highly
Effective People by Stephen R. Covey, he says that we spend time in
one of four ways, as seen in this matrix below:
The secret to good time management and effective
prioritization is simple: make sure you spend most of your time in Quadrant II.
Quadrant II deals with things that are important but not urgent, such as
relationship-building and investing time in planning the future. You not only
get all your tasks completed, but you also build a strong foundation for the
future by putting your time where it will reap benefits instead of going to
waste. Dr. Covey says that if you live in Quadrant II, “Your effectiveness
would increase dramatically. Your crises and problems would shrink to
manageable proportions because you would be thinking ahead, working on the
roots.”
2- Stephanie - a sweet girl, (tries her darndest to do all that is required of her), ironing in the kitchen
3- ' Out like a lightbulb' 5pm nap – what happens to Chloe when everybody in her world is busy (and why she's still up, unattended, at 10)
