GTD at Work

When I started this blog, one of my first goals was to be more productive at work.  I didn’t really know how to go about doing that, so I put together a bit of a plan to achieve that goal, but it turns out that I wasn’t very good at following my plan… In the end, I gave myself a pass because the goal wasn’t super clear, and this year I didn’t even make any professional goals here on the blog.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I was reading the book “Getting Things Done” by David Allen, and I promised that I would keep you appraised of my progress with the method of organizing and being productive… Well, I am still waiting to get the book back from the library, but have done quite a bit of online research and reading, and so have started implementing bits and pieces of it already.  (I’m sure I will change everything once I have actually read the whole book, but I figure starting something is better than procrastinating any further…)

Anyway, I’m still looking to increase my productivity at work, so I actually started implement the GTD process at work first, because I keep that separate from my personal stuff and it isn’t quite as overwhelming.  And if you read back to my plan for productivity that I made last January, it has some parallels to the GTD system, so I already was heading that direction before, I just didn’t quite make it all the way.  (GTD is the short form for “Getting Things Done”.)

I don’t really talk about the details of my work, only that I travel a lot.  I’m not going to change that; this blog is currently anonymous and I don’t want to accidentally say something about a project or a client that I shouldn’t.  So, no details for you, sorry, but I did want to share what I started for my GTD process, in case it might inspire someone, or maybe someone will have some pointers to share with me…

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2015 Goals in Review

I can’t believe that it is almost 2016 already.  2015 was a busy and exciting year for me.  I hope 2016 is a bit quieter, but I doubt it will be.  I already know of all sorts of exciting and fun things that are in the works, so I’m enjoying the down time this week.  (I have the week off work and am spending a lot of it at home, reading and puttering around my house.)

Anyway, I figure it is best to get my 2015 review done before the end of the year, so I’m going a bit off schedule of my regular Tuesday/Thursday posts (regular in that I’ve been trying for that schedule for about a month now…) and am posting my review today so that I can squeeze it in before the new year.

Last year, I started my blog off with 4 posts about the goals I had for 2015.  I did a bunch of somewhat mid-year reviews in August and September that pretty much covered everything… and I honestly haven’t done much since then to get any further on my goals, so if you read that, this won’t really contain anything new… and will be a quick summary of how I did with my 2015 goals.  I’ll talk about my new 2016 goals in another post, probably next week.

Financial Goals

First up, my financial goals.  In my initial financial goals post I made five goals.  I reviewed them all in August, but didn’t really make any major changes to them…

1. Budget:  I am really happy with how far we have come with our budgeting.  We keep track of our spending, and while we aren’t always super frugal, we have made good strides towards living a more frugal life.  The turning point for me was definitely finding the YNAB software.  I am a sucker for the built in graphs and reports.
2. Planned Spending:  I’m not sure if I should be proud of the accomplishment of saving up a bunch of money then spending it all… but we did it.  We had three big savings goals and though we haven’t actually spent all the education money yet, it’s there waiting to be spent.  If we add that all up we saved over $30,000 for our planned spending this year.  That’s pretty good savings.  Now we just need to put that towards more long term goals…
3. RRSP: I started the year with a vague goal for my RRSP contributions, and throughout the year I made changes to it… first to make it more concrete… and then when I reached that goal a few times, I increased it.  I’m happy to report that at this moment, my RRSP is over $50,000 so despite my low value when I did my review in August, I did manage to meet this goal!  YAY!
4. TFSA: Let’s just say this didn’t happen and move on, shall we?
5. Emergency Fund:  Originally this was a $10,000 goal, but with over spending in a few areas throughout the year, I decided to go smaller to start… and $3000 was the final goal… unfortunately, I only made it to $2500.  Better than nothing, but not there yet.

Professional Goals

Reading over my three original professional goals, they weren’t really specific enough, or very measurable…  (definitely not “SMART” goals), so it doesn’t surprise me that in my mid-year review, and even now, I don’t really feel that I’ve done well at these goals.

Professional Goals Update

Similar to my post yesterday reviewing my financial goals, today I’m going to quickly review my professional goals.  This will be a much shorter post because I only made 3 goals on my original professional goals post back in December.

The first goal was to write and pass my exam that will allow me to move up in my career.  I did that in April and received word in May that I had passed, so I called that goal complete.  However, I still haven’t completed the remaining paperwork to actually finish things up… So, I’m going to make this my new goal before Thanksgiving (Canadian Thanksgiving in October) to get that paperwork sorted out and submitted.

June 2015 – Goals in Review

HAPPY CANADA DAY!!!

Now, before I get started on this review, I have to admit that I’m getting a little tired of writing a review of all of my goals when there hasn’t been any progress on them… Or maybe I’m just tired of my goals… So… I’m going to change it up a bit here, and just review the goals that I’ve made progress on, or have something to report… Which isn’t much this month…

If you want to see a list of all my goals for 2015, you can check out my goals page.

Financial Goals

2. Savings/Planned Spending:
We got our new roof this month, so the home reno fund was successfully filled, and then drained… I’m sure we’ll get a new goal for the home reno fund soon enough, but until then we can concentrate on other savings…

May 2015 – Goals in Review

I can’t believe it is already June… I’m pretty sure I’ve said that at the beginning of all of my goals in review posts… It’s crazy how fast time seems to be flying by.

My goals posts always end up being really long, so I apologize in advance.  If you are just joining me on my journey to a better me, please check out my goals page for the list of my 2015 goals and links to the posts where I have explained them in detail.  But now, let’s get down to the review…

Productive Weekend

I am feeling a little bit better about things today… maybe I’m slowly getting out of my funk that I mentioned last week… I feel like my weekend was productive, and while not totally successful, it’s a step in the right direction.

Friday night, when I got home from my work trip, I had a bunch of girl friends over and we had a crafting party to get our wedding invites made.  We didn’t quite get them all completed, but with a bit more work on Saturday night, we were successful.  Now I just need to get them all addressed, and then I’ll put half in the mail, and the other half in my fiance’s backpack for bike delivery this week.

Saturday, I spent most of the day watching my fiance’s daughter play softball.  It was fun just to sit on my blanket on the grass and do nothing… quite relaxing.  Then, as I mentioned, we worked on the wedding invites and got them finished up.

Sunday morning I ran my half marathon.  I knew based on my training the past few weeks (or really lack of training), I was not going to make my 2 hour goal.  However, at the beginning of the race I gave myself two goals:

April 2015 – Goals in Review

I can’t believe that it is the last day of April.  Normally (as normal as 3 previous blog posts can be…), I post my goals in review once the new month starts, but I’m away for work right now, so it’s not likely that I’ll magically get anything accomplished, so might as well post my review early.

So here goes…

Exam Done!

Well, I wrote my exam yesterday… I won’t know for 6-8 weeks if I passed, but at least I can stop studying…

I still have a few other things left to do associated with the exam process, but at least I can stop studying and concentrate on other stuff for a little while.

Next weekend is our first attempt at 10k, and I want to get back to the decluttering, and I have a few other ideas that I want to write about. So please stay tuned for some more regular posting.

And because everyone loves kitty pictures… Here’s one of little cat:

Little Cat

Happy Easter!

So, random post today… I just felt like sharing what a good day I had Friday… It’s kind of like bragging… but I felt really productive and so I wanted to post something positive after my sort of negative week of posts (not really doing so well on my goals and going over budget in March).

Friday was Good Friday, which meant that I had the day off work.  Awesome!

I slept in, then took the bus downtown (ya public transit!) to meet with my hairstylist for my wedding to discuss budget and plans, etc.  I made the frugal decision to go for a regular green tea at the coffee shop (go April budget!).

After that I walked through the public market downtown and bought some delicious locally made sausages for dinner, which totally went against my meal plan for the week, but I felt good supporting the local farm, and it was probably a healthier than the pizza that I had planned…

March 2015 – Goals in Review

I can’t believe March is already done… And Easter is this weekend. I am excited for the long weekend, but will probably spend most of it catching up on my studying… Lame, I know…

March was pretty much a failure on the goals front.  I didn’t do much on my goals this month… like nothing.  So this review won’t have much progress to report. I was definitely feeling the March “blahs”… Most goals are still at the same place where they were at the end of February, but none the less, here it is: