Organizing Chaos - Systems and Processes are EVERTYHING

When my concussion was diagnosed, and then the post concussion syndrome, I was prescribed various physical therapies to overcome some issues. 
First issue - vertigo.  Had to learn to balance, with various exercises, like throw a ball at a rebounder wall and catch it while on one foot. 
Other major issue - my memory.   I lost words, lost train of thought, couldn't remember details of the day, much less the day before.  PRETTY scary stuff for anyone.  Terrifying symptoms for someone who relies on their brain for their job!  I felt like I was having "squirrel moments" where I'd be distracted by nothing and everything.

Fatigue was another one, that led to headaches... I'll save this for later.

As I went through therapy, it became apparent that my career path had already provided me the exact tools I'd need to manage the memory challenges.  Lists and calendars and goal setting, and a way to keep my head straight from sun up to sun down!  And, it worked!

Each night, I list out what needs to happen the next day, and a review of my current day to find areas that are left incomplete.  This is both a personal and a professional scan of activity.   The next day, I review it again, drill down a little more, and prioritize the most important tasks, on top of prioritizing what would take the most brain power, because, neuro fatigue was a challenge.  My attention issues were a nightmare around 3pm, and I'd often be knocked out with a headache. 

These tools and processes can be adopted by anyone who needs a little more organization each day, not just broken brain planners and people recovering from head trauma. 

Some tools cost money, others are free and downloadable.  But overall, it's a great practice to get into!  Once it becomes routine, you'll always have a record of what you've done, where you spent time, how your day went, and what's ahead of you!  :)

SMART SHEET - online program that allows you to project manage across several areas, and able to link others into it with you.  Set due dates, attach files, assign accountability.

OUTLOOK CALENDAR AND FOLDERS (or GOOGLE) - another way to track your schedule and sort projects into online folders for record keeping and follow up.

PAPER PLANNER - My 12 month daily planer by Day Designer is my favorite!  schedule of the day for appts, top three priorities, to-do list, notes area, and a place to jot down gratitude as I reflect on it all. 

JOURNAL - during my recovery, I was asked to journal daily because my memory was shot.  I still do this, helps me brain dump and begin my task list on a personal level to incorporate into my Day Designer.

FILING SYSTEMS/BINDERS (PLANNER BIBLES) - every event planner has a planner bible.  It's where we save contracts with vendors, speakers, hotels, convention centers.  Also, we save our program agenda, daily maps/schedules, trade show details.  All. Of. The. Things.  If it's a large conference, the binder can expand to a 2" size.  Smaller, day meetings, might be an organized folder.  But, bottom line, the entire event, start to finish is housed in these files. 

CHECKLISTS - planning an event requires extensive checklists from beginning to end, and even after the end.  You can find some online, depending on what you're planning.   Not event related?   You can make a check list for anything really.  I had post its all over my house - bathroom (brush teeth, for real, in the early parts, I couldn't remember if I did), kitchen (pack lunch), foyer (water bottle?  30 min walk done?)   Post-its are amazing little reminder tools. 

Hopefully this is helpful!   As soon as this COVID-19 outbreak settles down and I can get things into management mode again, I'll dig into each of these with a little more detail! 

Stay well! 

We All Float Here - Stress Reduction

I've been affectionately called a chaos coordinator in the past.  When I first started working in this field, I kept track of ways to do the job more efficiently to reduce stress.  It became almost a game - to zero in on the job and remove the things that often cause event planners to drink heavily.   For the most part, the conferences and meetings I run are more or less stress free.  Seriously.  Onsite, we're in good shape.
But, it's the leading up to the event that can still be stressful for so many reasons - no matter how hard you plan, there's always something that can be tossed at you from left field which requires quick thinking and reaction.

So, what are the main stressors in this career path?

• Communication - constant communication by phone, text, email, verbal between all stakeholders.  There's no normal 8 hour work day, we're constantly "on".  Doesn't give much time for the brain to shut off.

• Deadlines - DEADLINES... holy hell.   A good planner can create a project management minded process to allow the build up to be easy, relatively, so long as others in the plan adhere to their part of the deadlines.  

• Physical demands  - we're on our feet constantly during an event, sometimes for 12+ hours a day.  Lots of walking.  Setting up rooms, materials, lots of lifting.  And some conferences are up to a week long.  

• And... our innate perfectionism.  Our own worse enemy.  We just want the event to go off without a hitch.  Our work is a reflection of us.  If it goes like shit, well... then it makes us look like shit.  

Ok... now that I laid out a sample of what can bring about the STRESS, let's discuss how having a concussion, migraines, memory issues, brain fog can amp that stress up expotentially!! 

There are things I can't control very well - my handicaps happen, no matter how well I try to plan around the deficits.  For all the work I put in to have stress free conferences, I'm still feeling that stress hard core.  What can a planner do? 

SELF CARE!  Yes, that.  Massage.  Yoga, Pilates, running, working out in any way.   Meditation.

Meditation is pretty impossible for me by the way.  My brain does NOT shut off or focus easily.  It's hard to find an image to focus my intention when my task list is running alongside it and growing.

My friend provided me an option to try - float therapy.  I figured, why not?   And, I had no idea what to expect.

I was provided a tour when I arrived to the Synergy Float Center in Alexandria, Virginia.  It definitely had the full spa vibe, which I love, by the way.  Clean, calm.  Natural and organic products.  Focus on meditation, mindfulness, chakkras.   I was brought back into the room, which held a HUGE tub of water.  Also in the room, a shower, towels, ear plugs and vaseline. 

First, before entering the tub, I needed to shower off.  No make up, no lotions.  Also, can't have recently dyed hair, because they don't want the tub contaminated.  The tub was full of water and about 250lbs of epsom salts.   Want to know why there's vaseline and earplugs?  Well, salt water and cuts are NO bueno.  The vaseline was to cover hangnails or any other open cut on the body.  The ear plugs?  Because of heavy salt content, the plugs keep water out of the ears so that salt crystals don't make a home in there.  Evidently, that's crazy painful... what did I get myself into? 

Once in the pod, I had the option to shut the hatch, and when it sealed, I was literally sitting in a giant egg...and, floating was effortless.   I leaned back and my body naturally enjoyed a weightless bouancy.  I closed my eyes and with no sounds, no real light, I was suspended into a void... just me, the water, my thoughts. 

Here's where I wish I was better at meditation - my thoughts were ALL over the place.  Work tasks.  Kid tasks.  Worries about family.  Worries about my future marriage.  Worries about things that I wish I didn't worry about.  A thought would come in, and I'd push it out.  Not sure when I actually drifted off to sleep, but I did, finally.   60 minutes went by fast, and with the sound of a bell, I woke up, opened the hatch and felt a total full body relaxation I've never experienced before!  I fully intend to do this before my conference and again as soon as I get home from San Diego!

After showering off the salt water, I met up with my guide and we chatted a bit about the offerings of the spa that could help with the daily headaches and migraines.  Stay tuned -- magnesphere therapy is next on the list for this broken brain event planner! 

Planning During Recovery

I didn't realize how fucked my brain was until I really needed to use it.  My first test?  When my attorney told me to get a journal and write down what I remembered from the wreck, and to journal daily.   Easy, right?  I couldn't remember an entire day after my wreck.  Saturday was gone.  NO clue how that day was spent.  Just so you know, my family filled in the blanks...I bought an oven.  I went to a store, picked an oven, bought it.  Didn't remember it at all.  I knew at that point, something was very, very wrong. 

My accident happened at the end of August, about 30 days away from a major conference I was running.  PANICKED.   Simple tasks took more effort.  As a long time mult-tasker, ready to change gears in a heartbeat, suddenly I couldn't handle walking and talking at the same time.  I was tired all the time, and for someone who typically doesn't nap, this was way out of character. 

Was I prepared to manage an event with my "broken brain"?  I didn't have a choice, ready or not, it needed to happen.  My life, my lifestyle, my way of supporting my family, my joy, my passion - all wrapped up into this career path.  If this event went horribly bad, I could lose it all.  PANICKED. 

I had to delegate areas of my job to people who have never had that responsibility before with me, but that took really thinking through every single minuscule moment of event planning to figure out what I could handle, and what I couldn't handle.   So, how did I do that?  My way is one way, but not the only way.  This is how I worked with my limited executive function:

1.) Made a list of everything that needed to be done before the event
2.) Swallowed pride and realized that I couldn't do it, and further segmented the list into specific areas.
3.) Held a meeting with the team, further swallowing what pride I had left and asked for help. 
4.) TRUSTED that the task will be done by them, even if not done my way. 

Simply put -
Use lists daily.  Refer to lists regularly.  Recap your day, and pre-plan the next day.
Accept that you're injured - don't be a hero.  It's worse on the project later on to lead from a place of pain and isolation.
Ask for help.  Ask several times. 
Trust your team to support you.  Hopefully you're a leader who is respected, kind and supportive of her/his team, so this shouldn't be hard for them.
Constant communication.
And, build in the rest breaks. 

The rest breaks are my biggest tool to suggest.  Build it into your day. 

As you go back to work after a head injury, as much as you can, ease back in and respect the fatigue.  Don't ignore the symptoms.  My OT suggested a 5 minute, head down on the desk break every 30 minutes.  That was hard, and i'll be honest, couldn't do it often with the job.  Then, we moved to 5 minutes every hour.  Also tough when you have a 1.5 hour meeting.   I had to remind people to avoid scheduling me in back to back meetings, so I had a chance to decompress and reset for the next thing.   Even after 6 months, I still need the decompress and reset moments - both at home and at work. 

Recovering from a head injury requires patience and planning.  If you try to rush it, you're not set up for success.  If you try to wing it, you never let your brain get rewired.  Brains need habit.  Brains need reinforcement to make consistent connections. 

 

The Wreck Wasn't a Big Deal -- Until It Was

August 28, 2019... 
It was a GREAT day, until it wasn't.  I woke up early.  I smashed a HARD workout routine with my Beach Body crew - Morning Meltdown 100, I was on day 15 (highly recommend this, btw, even though I haven't been able to get back to it yet).  I had HUGE goals at work and personally...  I. WAS. KILLING. IT. 

I was about 15 minutes from the office, prepping myself mentally for a strategic planning session to map out big areas for 2020.  The next thing I knew, I felt the jarring impact.  The impact was so hard, my phone was catapulted into the back seat.  The items in my console were strewn all over the front of my car.  I was angry - because, I had important things to do and I knew, by the impact, that my car was damaged.  I knew I wasn't making it to work.  I knew that I had a mess to clean up.  I knew that I was blocking traffic...my neck hurt.  My head hurt.  Pretty sure I yelled F%$@ when it happened. 

By the time the ambulance arrived, I wasn't sure what end was up.  Somehow, I moved my car out of traffic.  I texted my boss.  I texted my other half.  I called 911.  Then it gets a bit fuzzy.  I vaguely remember a first responder asking me if I could move my car out of the road - obviously that was a no.  While I was talking, walking and otherwise not dead, I knew I didn't have it in me to move my car. 

In the ambulance, I complained that my head hurt and I felt sick to my stomach.  I complained that my neck and upper back were sore.  Once in the ER, the nurses and PA stopped by, made jokes about how I'll feel like I was hit by a car when the adrenaline wore off.  HA HA HA... no scans of my head.  NO discussion of concussion protocol.  Muscle relaxers, advil...and out the door I went.   "It's whiplash"... no worries. 

Only, it wasn't just whiplash.  :(

I missed work that day.  Took off the next couple days because I was sore.   I was crazy tired.  Definitely irritated with the world.  I do remember that part clearly - then the blank moments happened, where memory is gone.  It wasn't until I went back to work that following Tuesday that I realized something was very, VERY wrong. 

I busted my ass once back to work to catch up on days of missed tasks.  Made follow up calls to insurance, called my primary care for an appointment.  My head was pounding once I got out of the office.  Got home, went to bed, woke up in the middle of the night wanting to puke, dizzy and a massive headache. 

OH. MY. GOD... this is a concussion.  I have a concussion... WTF.   I thought back on questions from my team, "what's your concussion protocol?"  "Do you have a concussion?  Did you bump your head?"  "Why are you back at work already?" 

I called out of work - went to the doctors.  My friend referred me to an attorney.  I had to go pick up my police report, which in my mind, all these were easy tasks, but holy hell I struggled.  I had to buy a money order.  My debit card was cancelled. I didn't have cash... I couldn't manage myself out of a paper bag.  Every single thing was overwhelming.  Even then, I didn't understand what was happening to my brain.  See....I'm a chaos coordinator.  I manage well in high stress situations.  NOTHING rattles me.  I had no idea that my life was going to be turned upside down.

My magical, event planner super brain was compromised.  My first ever concussion and my diagnosis of post concussion syndrome was the start of a whole new adventure!