focus

Day 75: Preparing to Fail

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I fail a lot as I work towards my goals (clearly). I think most people do, but we just don’t hear about it very often. We do hear about how many businesses a person started before they succeeded or how many books a person wrote before they got published, but I feel like we don’t often hear about the day to day failures.  Those days we didn’t exercise or didn’t write or didn’t practice the instrument we’re trying to learn. These days can be very discouraging and can often roll over and over until months have gone by. Of course I don’t want months to go by! So, I’m always finding ways to make sure sure I succeed every day (or most days). I often don’t, but the best advice I’ve come upon so far is to “Prepare for Failure”.

I love this because it assumes I’m going to fail. It assumes I’m going to be tired after working all day and not want to write/exercise/blog, which I am and is often the reason for my not doing something. So instead of thinking you’ll be your best self and accomplish all the things you wanted to accomplish, this little nugget of advice assumes you won’t. And that you should figure out what you can do to make sure failure is less of an option.

For me this means writing in the morning because I know I’m going to be tired at night and put off doing it after work. It means changing into my exercise clothes at work and NOT GOING HOME to just “rest for a moment”. It means preparing a list of blog topics in advance so I don’t have to think up things at 9 or 10 at night.

So think you’re going to fail and then you’ll succeed.

Until tomorrow.

290 days to go.

Day 69: Happy October!

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Eek! It seems like I was just doing one of these at the beginning of September. It positively flew by and now we’re here – October 1.

I know we just had a monthly check-in, but there is an update!

  1. Become a Novelist
  2. Ballet
  3. Promotion
  4. Credit Card debt
  5. In a relationship

That’s right! There was a job open and I was waffling about applying for awhile, but I did and I got it. It’s a bit too soon to celebrate since we’re still discussing salary, but I think it’s just they’ll give me what I ask for or they’ll keep it the same. There’s not a danger that I would turn down the job or that they’ll un-offer the job to me. 🙂

Hooray! What good news for the start of the month. Of all the goals I’m slacking on the most I think Ballet is the one I’m having the hardest time with, so I want to make October my ballet month. I’ll do my very best to get back on track this month and I’ve made a few adjustments to my schedule, so it should be easier (ahem…should be…but we’ll see how that goes.

Perhaps in a few months I’ll be able to cross off one more of these. Nothing happening yet! Just wishful, positive thinking.

Until tomorrow.

Day 63: Doing what I want

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“A person is a success if they get up in the morning and gets to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.” -Bob Dylan

I read this quote about a month ago and it really defines what success is to me. I want to be able to wake up in the morning and have my day belong completely to me and then go to bed at night. Like a Saturday, but every day.

I suppose I do live this quote right now in my own way now. I work a job I’m pretty happy at and do my own projects on my own time. Sure there’s room for improvement (hence the blog…), but I think the general spirit is there. If I get done thing things I want to do and work towards the goals I want to accomplish, then that’s success. It doesn’t feel big, but that’s still a success in it’s own right.

Sometimes I feel like I want to get everything done at once, and I get frustrated I’m not moving faster.  Rarely do things happen as quickly as I expect them to, so it’s okay if they don’t happen right away as long, as I keep working. Things take the time they take.

Until tomorrow.

Day 39: Happy September!

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Happy September! I get older every year (obviously), but September always brings the excitement of fall and new beginnings. I no longer live in a place with seasons (Hi, LA!) and I’m several years out of school, but I still can’t wait for the cooler weather that comes with September.

At the beginning of every month I make my habit list in my journal, my new budget in excel and my monthly list of goals I want to accomplish. It’s a good way to check on how much money I’m spending, how often I’m doing the things that are important to me and what things I want to accomplish during the month. It’s SO easy to let the days pass you by and leave things left undone.

There’s only 24 hours in the day. 8 spent sleeping. 10 spent working and commuting and 6 left for everything else (fun things, chores, exercising and the like). It’s really not enough time which is why you have to have priorities. If you spend time on one thing, you’re not spending time on other things.

I find the first of the month is a good time to check on my priorities. It’s easy for a year to go by and not have accomplished anything you want, so a quick check in to go over my annual and monthly goals every month is really helpful. Maybe I don’t want the things I wrote down anymore and that’s okay. But I also have to be sure I want the things I’m working towards. And what better day to check in than the first of the month.

Off to do that now. Until tomorrow.

 

Day 35: Fantasy Self

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Eek! It’s already been 35 days since I started this blog and I feel like I haven’t made much progress. I’ve made a bit, but not as much as I wish. Still I went to ballet class this weekend and I’ve been writing pretty consistently. But I want to have done more!

One of the main problems I have with myself is that I can never live up to my fantasy self. You know the one? The one who eats healthily and jumps up at the sound of her alarm to write. The one who exercises regularly. The one who writes like she’s running out of time. The one who is always in a good mood at work and ready to help.  The one who is ambitious, but not too ambitious to be slytherin-like. 😛

I call her my fantasy self and sometimes I feel so, so far from her.

She’s who I want to be; the person I’m striving to be with this blog. Too often I fall short, but that’s not such a bad thing, is it? To have something to strive for? To aim to be the person I want to be.  To reach beyond who I currently am?

No, I think it’s a good thing, but I also have to remember to forgive myself when I fall short. Tomorrow is another day to live up to my ideal person, but it’s okay if I skipped writing for one day because I was just too tired from my job which pays my rent. It’s okay if I skip yoga one day because I’d rather lay in bed and drink coffee. It’s okay to not be perfect all the time, to not be my fantasy self (she is a fantasy after all). It’s okay to fail as long as I make a note and course correct. And then there are the days I succeed – the days I align who I am with who I want to be – even if it’s only one moment at a time.

Day 31: Monthly Check-in 1

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Sooo…somewhere along the line my days got messed up and I’ve been numbering everything wrong for the past month. Typical, but that’s okay because I just googled how many days it’s been since July 23 and the answer is 31. Back on track! (Hopefully)

I’ve decided to do monthly check-ins to see how I’m progressing in the long term and where I can improve! TO THE EXCEL DOC!

Screen Shot 2017-08-24 at 9.23.39 PM

Okay, it’s a screen shot of the excel doc. Now let’s revisit my goals in Day One.

  1. Become a Novelist – The righthand column with the bunch of “Yeses” are every day in the past month (plus some) that I’ve written. Sometimes it’s only a few minutes, and sometimes it’s much longer, but the important thing is that I work towards what I want every single day. I’m not there yet, but now I can see patterns in my behavior. Weekends seem to be tough for me to write some reason. I know 8/5-8/7 and 8/15-8/20 were the days I was dog sitting. And the end of July was when I got sucked into Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. Still, I think I’ve written more consistently since I started this project and that’s a win. Hopefully next month it’ll be a row of green.
  2. Ballet! – I took a few months off of Ballet and I’ve just gone back. I’ve also tried to take up yoga, which I’ve gone to a few times and pop physique (groupon!), which I haven’t managed to go to yet. I’ve made a little progress in that I’ve started going to something once a week, but I really do need to go more and hopefully once I make it part of my routine, I’ll be more green and less red.
  3. Promotion – No movement on this front, but I didn’t think things would happen in a month, so I’m content to wait. I should ask for more opportunities at work to learn new things so I can be a good candidate when the time comes.
  4. Credit Card debt – Still chugging away on this one, but I’ve been set back a bit because I had to buy a few flights. Next month I hope to make a serious dent in it, but it looks like it’s going to take longer than expected. (As many things do.)
  5. In a relationship – Nada on this front too. Although I did try a few new activities and met some new people. Who knows what the future holds there? 🙂

So that’s my monthly check in. I’m doing better overall than I was a month ago, but I still have a long ways to go and need to put some serious work in.

Until tomorrow.

Day 25: Eclipse Day!

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I don’t really take much stock in astrology, but I like the idea of turning points and today is apparently a big one. I think big events that don’t happen very often have a way of making us reflect on where we are in life. New Year’s Eve, Big Birthdays and Historic Events whether human or celestial. They make us think about where we were in the past and where we want to go in the future.

Clearly I’m already thinking about what I want to be next year or even next month or even tomorrow. But the next Eclipse in North America is happening in 2024 – seven years from now. I put it on my calendar. And I’m wondering where I’ll be then. Will I be married with a kid on the way? In a different city? In a different country? Or will I still be in the same place I am now? Will I still be in my same apartment? Will I still be working for the same company? Will I be happy or will I be thinking how I wished I would have changed the way I lived seven years ago during the last eclipse?

It makes us think in the long term, whether in months or years or decades. It’s so easy to get mired in the everyday aspects of life: getting to work on time and eating right and exercising. But I think it is so, so important to think about where you’re going and to take small (and large) steps to get you there. After all, do you really want to be the same person seven years from now? And what are you doing to get you where you want to go?

Until tomorrow.

Day 20: One Minute at a Time

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So back on track! Still dog sitting and still tired, but I’m back on track for now. And I’m sure I’ll miss a day tomorrow or next week, but for now I am here and I am writing.

And that’s pretty much the secret to my editing success. Originally I would set a timer for one minute and then write, write, write and then after sixty seconds I was done. You really can do anything for a minute. While it was tempting to do more than one minute, I get easily deterred and discouraged if I did half an hour the day before, but couldn’t manage it the next day. But I can do one minute every day – squeeze it in before I go to work, while I’m cooking or right before I go to bed. Easy peasy. And then suddenly you have a habit.

I’ve slowly been upping the amount of time I edit, so at the moment I’m at seven minutes. It doesn’t seem like a lot (and it’s not really), but something is better than nothing. I’m chipping away at the pages of my book slowly, but surely – one minute at a time.

Day 16: Be Focused

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Nothing really to report today that I didn’t say yesterday. I talk a lot about my goal of exercising more and I think that’s because it’s the one goal I find hardest to work on. They’re all hard, but for whatever reason that one in particular is the hardest.

Writing is hard too, but I can do it without leaving my apartment, so I don’t think about it as much. I wrote a book, or rather I’m still writing a book. Editing away. Day after day after day. Some days I make more headway than others.

When I started writing it was all stops and starts, but then I realized that I find targets really helpful. I set up my little word counter in my writing program and it has a little bar that turns from red to orange to green as the number of words you write goes up. Then – Ding Ding! – and 500 words later I was all done! (Yes, there was a literal ding ding. It’s the reward signal.)

I find editing much harder than writing. Writing flows out of my fingers pours out onto the page, but editing is like getting into the weeds. Everything needs to be pulled out and redone – whole chapters, whole paragraphs, turns of phrase, adjectives.  Everything is wrong. Maybe something is almost right, or could be right, but most things need fixing. It’s hard. But I found a solution,

I downloaded a timer called Be Focused. It’s a Chrome extension and is one of the many timer apps which is supposed to help you utilize the Pomodoro technique. That’s twenty-five minutes on and the a five minute break. Twenty-five minutes isn’t so daunting as 250 pages. Although it can be a little daunting. More on that later.

Until tomorrow.

 

Day 15: The Problem is the Journey

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Literally. Another Tuesday and another failed attempt at going to dance class after work.  I enjoy it. I really do. But it’s just a tad bit too far to be considered “convenient” and that is really the block in the road. The journey is the difficult part; the ending is the part I actually enjoy. Last week I said the lure of greasy food would be the place that gets me there, but that clearly isn’t the case.

Next week I’ll try breaking it down into smaller steps:

  1. Finish work
  2. Go into the bathroom
  3. Change into workout clothes
  4. Get in car
  5. Get on the highway (in the right direction – no towards home)
  6. Arrive
  7. Dance

Lucky number seven!

I’m the kind of person who really enjoys crossing off To-Do lists, so hopefully this will actually get me there!

Until tomorrow.