Struggling with how to explain this to someone I don’t know well. A couple weeks ago I received an email from someone who wanted to schedule a “pick your brain” session. And we all know how I feel about those (see “Brains Are Not for Picking” on that topic. I’m considering republishing it as “You Aren’t A Zombie – Stop Picking My Brain!”). But this is a new person and I don’t know him at all so I agreed. We chose a Wednesday for lunch. My daughter wanted to have a friend over and I thought it would be fun to have them go to lunch while I was at my meeting – get them out of the house, etc. So we planned that with the other mom. Tuesday this person calls and needs to reschedule so we move it to Thursday. I get it – it happens. So I call the mom and move the lunch. Great. Wednesday he calls and cancels. Wants to reschedule for the next week. Well now I’m stuck because the other mom is counting on me so I take the girls to lunch. Nothing terrible but 1.5 hours out of my day that I could have used other ways.
The next week comes around and it is a killer scheduling-wise. I have a client who wants to have a catch-up lunch but the only day he can do it is the day I’m meeting with this person. So I end up cramming a meeting with him in where I had intended to do something else which meant I worked until 10:00pm Monday night. Again, not the end of the world, and completely my choice (and got another project so YAY!). I had another person call and want time on Thursday but I couldn’t fit him in so we moved that. Again, my choice. And, because I wanted to attend a networking meeting Thursday morning, I had to work two hours extra on site at a client Tuesday to keep their hours right which made things weird there. Again, my choice. But, when I was sitting in the restaurant and got the call that this person would be 20 minutes late, I was frustrated. And we now have to reschedule because frankly, I didn’t have 20 minutes of sitting-around-time in my schedule.
So the question is, how do I help him understand this isn’t about me – if I’m the only person he’s ever done this to then fabulous. Who cares. But it isn’t. So how does one own one’s schedule in a way to know that changes will effect any number of people a la Its a Wonderful Life and not meeting my commitments is a problem? Should be a million laughs if and when we get together. In the mood I’m in now, I’m going to show him this post!
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