We all have agendas.  Most of us in the professional world live by agendas.  Siri tells me that an agenda is a list of items to be discussed at a formal meeting or a plan of things to be done or problems to be addressed.  Speaking on a more individual level, it can be the intentions or motives of a particular person or group.

My agenda yesterday was to go to school and check in with my sub, then get myself to Indianapolis.  My agenda was pretty clear cut and well planned until I got THE TEXT.  “Your flight has been delayed…”  Does the airline not know that I have an AGENDA?!?  As I’m beginning to stress over a truly first world problem, I decide to ask for help – not get angry or make it all about ME, (although truthfully, it was), but calmly ask for help.  The woman on the other end of the line was most helpful and was able to get me on a new agenda which then caused me to adjust the rest of my agenda for the day.  Fortunately, I ran into friends as I arrived who were able to get me caught up on my original agenda for the day and bring my world back into balance.

And that’s it, isn’t it?  We all move day by day from agenda to agenda, some created by us, others for us, all recorded with great care in our phones or plan books or day planners, only to be deleted, moved or scratched out when our agendas are interrupted.  And what if my agenda isn’t detailed enough and I forget important little details in the execution of said agenda?  There’s a fine line between too much and too little.  And who is the agenda for?  Just me?  Me and a someone or a group of someones?  Just some new things for me to consider as I become a person who takes others agendas and turns around and creates agendas for other people.

Those trickle down or grassroots agendas are multi-layered, having started up or down  the food chain, passing through other agendas to me and then on from there. Is the agenda just informational or does it require us to take action?  Does the agenda help propel thoughts and actions or is it just to hear myself talk.  It’s an important question because I have sat through agendas that were put in place just because someone required a certain amount of my time to be spent on some kind of agenda, just to say we did it.  How much of my life have I wasted sitting through those agendas?

My personal agenda changes depending on what’s going on.  Usually it’s just to make it through whatever it is that I’m doing without making too many mistakes or looking like a fool.  It can range from the mundane, like my Saturday morning cleaning agenda (which went completely out the window this particular weekend), to the sublime where I feel maybe something I did or said made a difference somehow.  Those are the ones I aim for, because as I get older, I realize that I don’t have as much time to make a difference, so that time becomes precious and agendas become more strategic.

While the idea of being free from agendas sometimes sounds like a wonderful dream, I realize that I actually like an agenda or to do list – something that tells me I have things to do, places to go and people to see.  So my long term agenda is to always question my motives when creating agendas, especially if I hope to make a difference for others.  Now, time to work on my agenda for tomorrow.