When Worlds Collide

Organizers and non-organizers (free spirits?) should never mix. It just seems to breed irritation on both sides.

You've probably guessed by now that I'm an organizer. I like knowing how my day will unfold. I don't think I'm obsessive. I can go on a vacation and wake up every morning without a plan. But when I need to be working i.e. not on vacation, I like to know what my day will hold. Not every little detail. But I like knowing what blocks of time are committed to interactions with other people, which ones I can spend in front of the computer, which ones are dedicated to teaching, or meetings, or other things that I need to attend.

Right now, with my online work, part of what I need to do is to produce content with an outside contractor. I get along very well with this contractor... when we meet.

Planning ahead to meet is really, really tough though. It may have something to do with our different industries. Education usually has semesters, deadlines, objectives, goals etc. That's me. Suits me very nicely. I actually like having my semester all planned out ahead of time, and my schedules very rarely change because I'm comfortable with planning months ahead.

Creative types, like the contractor, tend to operate more fluidly, working when the urge hits. Thing is, it's hard to plan for urges to hit, right? So in collaborating, I don't know at the beginning of a day whether we'll collaborate that day. And creative types tend to be night owls. So I can't even call to find out if we can collaborate that day until the afternoon.

Drives me nuts.

The problem is really only becoming apparent during this project, because it's so huge that we need to collaborate over multiple sessions. Before, we'd always met over one or two sessions at the most, which made it easier to plan (or at least minimized the non-planning to small snippets that were manageable).

We'll be shopping for a new contractor for the next project I think, particularly if it's a large project again. But right now? We need at least another two collaboration sessions. *sigh* I have absolutely no idea when they'll take place. A horrendous way to work as far as I'm concerned.