this ocd of mine, i'm gonna let it shine

By my standards, I had a very productive Saturday. I didn't sleep in (well, not as late as I wanted), got a haircut, finished unpacking from Michigan, did laundry, cleaned, prepared a lesson, went to the grocery store, made scotcheroos and went to a party. I mean, if you knew what my normal Saturday's were like, you'd be impressed. However, two big things did not happen on Saturday: Christmas shopping and working.

Work. After being out of the office unexpectedly for three days the week before and knowing this week was going to be intense, I really needed to work over the weekend. And I did not.

Monday rolled around and, even though I worked 14 hours, I still only finished what I should have done over the weekend. I was now a day behind. Tuesday showed up and I needed to make up for the lost time. Unfortunately, when I arrived at work (early!) I saw that my morning was full of meetings.

I needed a plan. So, at 12:30 while I was eating lunch, I made one.

Aside from a meeting from 3-4, my calendar was clear after 1pm. By that time I only had 17 proposals left to review. If I wanted to be out of the office by 7:30pm, I had 5.5 hours to review those 17 proposals, assuming I ignored every other email, phone call, request that came in. That meant I could spend 19 minutes on each proposal. Ultimately, I decided I would allot myself 15 minutes per proposal, giving me a 4 minute buffer for each in case things got crazy.

You may think I'm joking, but I assure you I am not. I crunched these numbers.

What did I do to keep on track, you ask? Well, I opened up the stopwatch on my phone and would check back every so often to see how much time I had spent with the proposal I was working on. The timer would be reset every time I opened a new proposal.

I'm not going to lie, I thought this was a brilliant plan.
I had been at it for nearly two hours when a teammate walked up to my desk. She began talking and after noticing my phone said, "What's going on with your phone?"

Me: "Oh, it's the stopwatch. Just pretend you never saw it."
CW: "Right. Why is the stopwatch going?"
Me: "Oh, you know...I'm just timing how long I'm reviewing each proposal."
CW: "You're timing how long you review each proposal."
Me: "Uh, yup. I have 15 minutes to spend on each one so keep talking; you're eating into my time."
CW: "Dude, I can't even talk to you with that thing going. It's stressing me out!"
Me: "Look, it's not weird..."
CW: "Yes, it is weird. But whatever works for you."

So, maybe it was an extreme measure. BUT I AM DESPERATE. And I didn't care how weird she though it was when I finished all 17 proposals 90 minutes earlier than planned. Just in time to start in on all the emails I had been ignoring for the last four hours.

That's 14 minutes per proposal, for those of you keeping score at home. OCD wins.