THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 25, 1996 TAG: 9602210063
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KRYS STEFANSKY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
ONE WOMAN, a perfectionist, spent all day cooking the family's evening meal. It was good food, but she got nothing else done. No laundry, no cleaning, no errands.
Another fellow, a teacher, couldn't budget his workout time. He was fit as a fiddle, but he never turned in any grades on schedule. He got so frustrated he finally brought a sleeping bag to school thinking that would help.
Meredith Paynter knows desperation like this.
``This room,'' she said, gesturing at the tidy office in her Kempsville home, ``never used to look like this.'' She finally got help herself, got organized, got into a new line of work. She made clients out of the passionate cook and the tardy teacher.
Paynter became a personal professional coach.
``It's not so strange,'' she says. ``CEOs have them, singers, athletes. For the ordinary Joe to have one is unusual but, if it can help. . . .''
There are people out there, she says, who live chaotic lives. They're held back from professional success by messy desks, unrealistic daily goals, demanding but unsatisfying memberships in organizations. They never turn projects in on time, miss deadlines, and put off work because they can't see how to get started.
Some of them give up completely.
``They say if I can't get it all done, why bother to get anything done,'' she says. ``Women, especially, have too much to do with work, home, school and kids.''
When clients come to her, Paynter helps them focus on their goals and fix what's bogging them down. In person, over the phone or by computer, she teaches them ``chunking,'' breaking projects into small pieces to fit their attention span.
Early solutions can be as simple as list-making, setting a routine or using an alarm for time management. Productivity at work can improve with white noise machines to boost concentration, headphones, scheduling hours when a person's office door stays closed for optimum work time. It can be as easy as setting up a decent filing system.
As their coach, she gives people permission to let go of uninspiring but time-consuming memberships in civic organizations, church committees or PTAs.
``In the grand scheme of things,'' she tells them, ``it doesn't matter if you say no.''
In Paynter's case the light came on about two years ago when the Memphis native got the right diagnosis for what had been wrong in her own life. At 40 years old, she discovered that her inability to concentrate, set goals and reach them had been because she had attention deficit disorder.
``It's like walking around in lead shoes,'' she says, remembering a household and work life that always bordered on collapse. She looked OK to others but privately knew she was in a battle.
A coach helped her see where she was blocking her own success - her messiness and clutter, for example - and then making a list of priorities for getting her life in order.
In getting help herself, Paynter found both a new sense of calm and her life's work. She runs her business, The Coaching Advantage, from a happily organized household.
``This is my passion,'' she says. ``I didn't know I had a passion, except chocolate.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
RICHARD L. DUNSTON/The Virginian-Pilot
Being a personal professional coach is ``not so strange,'' says
Meredith Paynter. ``CEOs have them, singers, athletes.''
by CNB