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Day 167: Gratitude 7

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Gratitude of the day: Pomodoro Method

Have I mentioned I used Pomodoro Method in the past? The basic premise is you set an amount of time to work where you only focus on one task. So set a 15 minute timer for writing and then you get a 5 minute break and then another 15 minutes to focus (or 25 or whatever time works best for you) and then wash and repeat. It’s really helpful to break down larger tasks into smaller time increments to make them less daunting and more manageable (and easier to start)!

I started using the Pomodoro method coupled with the X-method (don’t miss a day so you can see all those sweet x’s) and it really changed the way I get things done. I have such a hard time starting tasks, but it’s easy if I tell myself I only have to do 5 minutes and then I just keep rolling along until I’ve gotten more done than I anticipated. And I get to fill in a day on my Habit Tracker 🙂

Easy peasy.

Until tomorrow.

198 days to go. Eek!

Day 117: Hi again!

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It’s me! I’ve been MIA for many, many days. I got my promotion at work and then radio silence basically. A few team members were sick or traveling for work and then we had a major event coming up and so I really only had time for one thing. My life the past few weeks has just been work, eat, sleep, repeat. I’ve never clocked over forty-five hours previously, but now I’m getting close to sixty. It really is exhausting.  I don’t know how people do this for years.

I really haven’t had time to do anything else in my life these past few weeks. I wrote for ten minutes today before I had to rest and take a nap. I skipped ballet and I’ve cancelled on so many dates in the past couple weeks, I think of myself as a flake now. It’s no good. (I am making way more money than I thought though…)

I didn’t think it was going to be like this. And maybe it’ll get better in the future. It really has to. Maybe it’ll be better once I know what I’m doing and can just do it at the drop of a hat without doubting myself…but if it doesn’t then I don’t think I can do this in the long term. We’ll see. I need to go take my second nap of the day now.

Until tomorrow.

248 days to go.

Day 100!

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Happy Day 100 Me! There are way more milestones to check in than I thought! I have the first of the month, the monthly check-ins I set aside for myself and now 100 days. (Today also happens to be the first of the month so it’s double check in day.)

I’m not going to do a check in since I just did one, but I do want to say it’s good to have “check-ins” on a regular basis. Just take ten minutes to yourself and see what you’ve accomplished and what steps you still need to take to move towards your goals.

I generally do a life check-in at the beginning of each month (today!). I have a habit tracker that I fill out every day to see if I’m building the habits I want to make part of my life. I check off the boxes every day, so if ever there’s a long string of empty boxes, I know I have some work to do. Sometimes it’s empty because someone was visiting or I was traveling, so my routine wasn’t the same as usual, but if I know there are no different circumstances around those days, I know I need to do something! I also have a longer term goals check-list which I carry over from month to month so I can see what I’ve completed and what I still need to do.

So check in with yourself! And hopefully it’ll help you see trends of your behavior and days over time.

Until tomorrow!

265 days to go!

P.S. Went to ballet. Yay!!

Day 91: Monthly Check in 3

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Time for my third monthly check-in! It’s been three months since I started this self-improvement plan (project?) and I think I’ve done relatively well so far! The holiday season is quickly approaching so it’s best that I come up with a few ways to stick to my goals (next post!)

  1. Work on my Novel – I finished my novel (again!) after cutting out the whole middle section. Now it’s just time to edit again (and again and again and again. Will the editing never stop?) I do think I’ve learned a lot in this process and hopefully my next book will not require so much cutting and rewriting and editing (but it probably will.) I’m hoping by the end of the year I can have a solid book and begin sending query letters to agents.
  2. Ballet – The cycle for the beginning of class started again, so hopefully it’ll stick this time! It’s definitely been a struggle (clearly), but I’m always hoping to do better.
  3. Promotion –  DONE! 
  4. Get out of credit card debt – Blargh. Still working on this and I will be for quite some time. Hopefully with my promotion I can start paying it off more aggressively (plus that bonus and tax return next year will hopefully help!)
  5. In a relationship – Still Bumbling. I’m not sure if anything is going to work out. Usually I get irritated with people by the third or fourth week and I can feel it happening again. There’s just an expectation with online dating that everyone wants to either just hook up or jump directly into a relationship. And I don’t want either of those things so I feel people are often disappointed.  And I’m resistant to both so we get nowhere in the end.

So there’s my third monthly check-in. Ninety one days in and I’m a little farther along with all my goals except Ballet. Perhaps November will be Ballet month, just like October was meant to be Ballet month.  Eventually I will figure out a way for it to stick!

Until tomorrow.

274 days to go. It’s a lot of time and it’s no time at all, right?

Day 78: Sacrifice

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The thing about wanting to achieve my goals is that there’s never enough time or energy for everything. I spoke about this previously in my 100 blocks post. (Day 5! That seems ages ago!)  I wish I was a high energy person, but that’s just not the case and so I just have to deal with it instead of pretending I’ll be high energy when I get home. I know that if I blog, then I’ll have less time and energy for writing and if I cook dinner to save money then I’ll basically be too tired for anything else.

Part of it is about planning to fail. I know I get tired after cooking, so I make a large batch of something and have that sustain me throughout the week. Part of it is deciding what’s more important to me. Right now in my life it’s important that I cook instead of eating out to save money. It’s important that I blog some days instead of writing (or writing less) because it keeps me accountable.

What this really comes down to is that I KNOW I won’t have time and energy for everything so I need to prioritize what’s important to me. That means saying no to dinners and drinks so I can save money and have time to write. It means giving up on dating for awhile if it’s taking up too much of my time. (That is TBD at the moment…) Basically it means sacrificing some things I enjoy now, so I can be proud of where I am in the future. Now I just need to figure out what’s more important. Part 2 coming soon!

Until tomorrow.

287 Days to go.

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 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 47: A Half Week in Review

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Soooo….I did a half week in Finance. Not what I wanted to do, but good enough. I like these week long challenges and this is the first in a series (next one will start on Monday!). Perhaps I’ll make them rotating challenges so that I’m constantly working on the things I want to be working on. It’s definitely a good way to keep myself accountable!

I noticed I have spent less money since the beginning of the month, which is good! I’ve been keeping an eye on everything I’m spending and have made a conscious effort to spend less on food and random cups of coffee. (Yay me!) It’s only September 9th, but that means a third of the month is almost done!

I haven’t been tempted to buy much recently, although I may need to take a peek in a bookstore soon. 🙂 The main lesson which helped me is Time vs. Stuff. Buying less stuff or rather buying stuff that is of equal value to the time I spent earning what it costs will help me cut out extraneous purchases from my life. Honestly there’s not a whole lot of things I would happily spend ten or twenty hours working towards. I really think I’d much rather spend time working towards experiences than things (not really news to anyone….) but it’s hard to remember sometimes.

Until tomorrow.

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.