Boundaries

I haven't had time to say a whole lot to say this week (aside from my regularly scheduled posts!). I had a terrible, sleep-deprived week and nearly walked off the job on Friday afternoon.

Yep, I have days like that, too.

Monday and Tuesday of last week were normal days, full of meetings and on both days, I sat down in my office around 5 pm to start my "real" work. I am still responsible for a few reports, analyses, and the emails. Oh, the emails. I usually receive more than 100 per day. It's insanity. So on Monday, I think I left by 7:30 pm.

Then on Tuesday, right after I sat down to do my real work, Nurse Jackie sort of slunk into my office with a devious look on her face. She said, "Um, we need your help. Got a sec?"

Always the people-pleaser, I agreed. Nurse Jackie threw a 34-page financial report on my desk (it landed with a thud and dust scattered) and asked me to create a presentation from it. Dumbfounded, I asked why the report's owner (one of the other execs, whose identity I will not disclose) did not write the presentation. Nurse Jackie responded that this *was* his presentation. In other words, it wasn't going to work.

So insert me, coming in at the 11th hour, to try and recreate the thought process of one of our most seasoned execs. I read through the 34 page report numerous times, restructuring, trying to underline the reasoning and define an argument. I was in my office until late evening on Tuesday and Wednesday nights and finally emerged with a reasonable document.

THEN, on Thursday, I had to meet one of my colleagues from St. Piggy's at 7 a.m. for Lean training at St. Fozzie's. Joe, my colleague from St. Piggy's, is willing to help me jump-start a Lean program at St. Fozzie's; he let us use his material and traveled up to Chicagoland to help me facilitate training for 100 people. We had an awesome simulation where the leaders had to staff "St. Potato Hospital" and put a patient through the hospital by constructing a Mister Potato Head. Then we teach them how to Kaizen and have them fix a bunch of parts of the hospital. Then we have them run the simulation again, attaching the hospital stay to money, billing for each completed Potato Head, subtracting for quality defects and FTE's. The result? An operating margin. All of the hospital leaders understand the simulation in terms of the operating margin!

That went on for three sessions on Thursday and two sessions Friday. Even though my speaking part was small, about 5-7 minutes per session, I was trying to mentally support my friends and St. Fozzie's colleagues as they helped their peers understand the concepts. Many of our folks aren't seasoned speakers and were nervous. By the Friday sessions, everyone was keen on their parts and we flowed like a machine. A machine, I tell you!

However, I had an irate patient family interrupt my aura and the newest manager I just hired had her baptism by fire. So I kept having to step out to speak with her, the ICU manager, and the Director of Nursing. Fun stuff. There's nothing like speaking to groups of people and having your pager going off the whole live-long day.

But by the time the last session concluded on Friday, I was starting to crash and burn. I actually surpassed 80 hours and as I drug myself back to my office after the last session, I couldn't care less about what was going on. I had survived the week and all I could think about was my bed. I knew I had to get out of there and asked my assistant to page me only in an emergency.

I left work by 4:30pm and was home, in my bed, crashed out asleep by 6pm. Jack let me sleep and didn't bother me all evening.

I'm trying to figure out how to draw some boundaries with work so I don't burn myself out like this. I was actually sick from the stress I was under and spent most of Saturday with a sleep hang-over and a headache. Despite our house inspection on the new house (which came back perfect...they didn't require us to get anything done on the house), Jack put me to bed by 8pm so I could avoid the cold threatening to massacre my immune system!

Alas, it worked. I woke up refreshed and ready to go on Sunday. All we really did was hit mass, go for a long walk, and watch the new Harry Potter (was scary and sad). However, because we went to 11:00 mass, I spent the morning completing an ethics paper for school. I wonder if they will detract from my grade since I was working on Catholic bioethics on a Sunday morning and was, obviously, breaking the Sabbath?? Hmmmmm!