Being my own boss.

I know many people would love to be their own boss. Imagine the flexibility of self scheduling, the luxury of setting your own targets, goals and looking after your own paycheque.... here is where you hear the music end as the record scratches to a stop.

Reality.requires context.

There are as many ways to fail at starting and operating your own business as there are people who try it, it's tough. I happen to be lucky in that I did not start the business that I am in, I sort of fell into it as it was an already  established family business. I have done everything there is to do in the business and now I get to be, for the most part, my own boss. I have been here for over 25 years after all. At one point I could say that I installed enough systems that I doubled our client base... not without other help of course.

The trouble is that sometimes, maybe more often than I know, I would love for someone to say "do this to the exclusion of everything else". You see, I am in a very interrupt driven environment. Alarm systems, installation, monitoring and service. The very nature of alarms and the reasons why people need them makes this interrupt driven. I set a target or goal and I know that I can meet them, just not necessarily on any known timeline. While the cause of an interruption takes a certain length of time to address, the interruption lasts for a lot longer as it takes time to get back into the "groove". This is frustrating and is often cause to drop a project or even a time consuming task that needs to get done.

As a result of the environment I tend to not honour my target timelines even without interruptions, almost as if I assume I will have them so why bother.

I need to be a tougher boss for me in order to get to the end of some of the piles of stuff that I need to get through.

Well, that was a rambling bit of writing.

Jeff.