Personal Goals for 2018

This post took a bit longer to get written and posted than I had anticipated… I kept getting distracted reading everyone else’s posts on their goals for 2018… I posted my financial goals for 2018 already, and now I want to go over my personal goals for 2018.

Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash

As I mentioned when I wrote about my financial goals, it is very hard to predict what this year will hold for me, or know how everything will play out with baby-to-be, and so it is very hard to think up personal goals that will be applicable for the whole year.  I was considering only doing monthly goals, but I think I can find a few goals that I can work on all year.  If you followed along with my personal goals from 2017, some of these might seem a little familiar…

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I’m Away Again… So, What’s the Plan?

Remember last month when I discussed how when I go away for work, everything else just drops off the face of the planet?  Yeah… So, I’m away for work again, and that plan to have a plan in place before I went so I would be productive… Yeah, well that didn’t happen… But I’m writing this on Monday night, my first night away, so I’m going to put together a plan for this week right now… Let’s go over the five challenges that I discussed.

1. Exercise

The first issue that I was having was that I didn’t get any exercise while I am away… So I put together a mini fitness challenge for this week… Since it is already the end of Day 1, I left that as a complete rest day… And I know that on my travel day home (Day 7) I won’t be doing much of anything, so I left that as a complete rest day as well… Anyway, here it is:

2. Eating

This work trip is a little different than the last in that I’m staying at a work camp, not at hotels (meaning this site is more remote)… So, I get most of my food served to me from the camp kitchen, and I pack my lunch from the lunch fridge… It’ll be a bit of a challenge to stay away from the yummies, but I’ll try my best…  I did buy myself a selection of healthy snacks so that I wouldn’t be as tempted, but remember when I said I shouldn’t have a second plate at dinner… I didn’t re-read that until after dinner tonight… So, I had a second plate at dinner.  However, that second plate consisted of a green salad, so really that’s like a win, right?  Especially because I didn’t have any sweets after dinner.  In any case, with my challenge to keep a food journal going, I should be motivated to not eat the wrong stuff because I’ll have to write it down… Wish me luck!

Personal Challenge: How do I Keep Productivity Up While Away for Work…

So, did you notice me drop off the face of the planet there for about two weeks?  Yeah, I went away for work… And it seems that when I do that, everything else just stops happening… I don’t exercise, I don’t keep up with my writing, and I definitely don’t keep up on many of my goals… I haven’t even been reading many blogs, and definitely haven’t been commenting on them…

Work Travel Sucks the Life Out of Me…  

To be fair, we do work quite long days, but I should be able to at least get myself to do an easy 20-30 minutes of yoga or something…And I don’t eat well either… after a long day I am always really hungry… and then we eat at restaurants and I almost always order junk and over eat.  And after a long day, a nice big glass of wine or a cold refreshing cider always makes me feel good… so, I eat and I drink more than I should… and without the regular exercise that I normally get when I am at home, it doesn’t add up to feeling very good…

I have this grand idea that I will exercise, eat well and all the rest… but this last trip the only thing I was pretty good about is drinking enough water/tea to fill up my 8 daily boxes in my bullet journal.  I just get tired and lose all motivation… So I think I need some help.  And maybe an action plan.

I did have some luck last fall with exercise while I was away when I gave myself a fitness challenge.  Not resounding success, but some success…  So perhaps I need to get myself on a new challenge…

Getting Organized: An Update…

I’m sure you were all waiting anxiously to find out how my first week of “getting organized” went… Or maybe not… but in any case, I’m going to give you a quick recap…

In summary, it didn’t go so well… but I still feel like there was some progress made, so maybe with a couple more weeks it will go a bit better…

I started the week off strong, with my Sunday plan completed on Sunday evening, I thought for sure I was in for a 100% success rate.  And while I did do some of my evening to-do list on Sunday night, I didn’t get it totally completed… my lunch was only half made, and I definitely left a few dishes in the sink… (not a good start)

So, Monday morning, when I slept through my 5:30 am alarm… Or hit snooze in my sleep… I’m not sure which really… the morning didn’t exactly follow my morning schedule… And then I didn’t have that extra time to make up for my slacking on the evening to-do list… Which of course means that I didn’t leave on time for work… and didn’t make my goal of 8am arrival at work.

Getting Organized: My Evening To-Do List

As I mentioned on Sunday, I’ve come up with a three part plan to get myself more organized and be more productive.  The first part was my Sunday plan which has helped a little bit already, but will probably take a while to really be a habit.  The second part of the plan is my evening to-do list.  This is sort of linked to the third part of the plan, my morning schedule, but I’ll post about that tomorrow.

It probably comes as no surprise, especially to those who are naturally organized and productive, but I have found that if I get a few small things done in the evening before going to bed, my mornings are way easier, which of course leads to being more productive in the morning and getting to work at a better time, and generally leads to a better day.

I’m pretty sure that there are many home/life organizing blogs, websites, and even courses that cover the topic, so rather than go over all again, here is my “must do” list before bed.  No exceptions.

Getting Organized: My New Sunday Plan

I’ve decided that I need to work on getting a bit more organized in my life in general.  Every once in a while I’ve posted a to-do list (like here or here) on my blog when I’ve felt like my schedule or to-do list is out of control and I need some external support and accountability.  Those weeks mostly work out to be much more productive… I don’t know if I need to write a list on my blog each week, but I’ve come up with a three part plan to get myself organized:

1. My Sunday Plan
2. My Evening To-Do List
3. My Morning Schedule

Today I’ll talk about #1, and hopefully I’ll be able to post about #2 and #3 later this week.  I’m sure some of you will wonder that I need to actually think about these things, not everyone needs to… but I love lists, and schedules, and my brain seems to require them in order to be the most productive, so bear with me as I go through this process.

So, I have created a Sunday evening plan for myself.  Somewhere in my organizing internet adventures, I stumbled across this post on the Sunday Basket.  I have not purchased the ebook, but I’ve read some of the posts and I’ve adapted the idea for me.

Follow-Up Mid-February Procrastination

On Tuesday I posted about my procrastination, and how I was needing more structure in my evenings.  I made a list of goals for the evenings for the rest of the week.  Let’s go over the results:

Mid-February Procrastination

I’m not sure if I really need to do a formal review of my goals again… I just published one a few weeks ago, but I want to use this blog for accountability, and for working out what is or isn’t working, and things definitely weren’t working last week…

I could make excuses that being sick and the holiday Monday totally messed with my schedule, but I also wasted time and basically wasn’t productive when I should have been… nearing the end of last week, I told myself I would get on track on the weekend… and that didn’t happen… so of course, I told myself that this week would be better, and so far it hasn’t started out so well.