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Thinking…thinking…thinking…

0 comments By Nicki Filed in Business, Personal Enrichment, Planning Tagged with , , , January 12th, 2010 @ 6:00 am

The kids and I just watched the second Night in the Museum movie – I liked The Thinker.

Recently (two nights ago – very recently) my husband, who regularly goes to bed before I do because it takes him 4x as long as long to fall asleep, asked if I would be staying up late on his way to bed. I replied that I hadn’t really thought about it, and proceeded to work and plan (I’ll be honest – mostly play) for the next four hours, not getting to bed until 12:30 a.m. the next morning.

What was my problem, you may ask?

I didn’t think about it.

I know from experience that when I spend 15 minutes or so – sometimes even less – thinking about what I want to get done at work or with the kids, my success rate and how I feel about my day is a lot higher than when I just “let things go”.

Maybe it’s all in my head. Seeing things checked off on a list does give a person a certain sense of accomplishment. Maybe I’m accomplishing the exact same amount of stuff in a night when I just goof off for hours as opposed to nights like last night, when I made a list of six items and accomplished five, all before midnight (mostly).

But even if it is just an illusion, I think I like it. As I write this, it’s about 14 minutes to midnight. I think I’ll polish this up, then spend five minutes thinking about tomorrow.

2010, Bring It On

0 comments By Nicki Filed in Business, Financial, Home, Personal Enrichment, Planning Tagged with , , December 21st, 2009 @ 6:00 am

With a little help from the planner and article that Chris Guillebeau over at The Art of Non-Conformity published, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to do next year. it involves an awful lot of reading, writing, and financial planning, really, with a healthy dash of extra income and healthy lifestyle adjustment. And of it all goes according to plan, it will be one heck of a year.

With this planning, I’m looking at the next year in a way I never have before. I always enjoy making a list of resolutions to get me through the New Year, those that are to begin promptly at midnight on January 1st, and are to be discarded as somehow soiled beyond repair if I don’t strictly adhere to them and execute them perfectly every day. (Can you tell I’ve been watching The Last Samurai? I can!) To put it more direct, if I can’t keep it up, then I give it up.

This time I’m trying to think of things as stepping stones. Yes, I want to do all these things, but they can’t happen all at once. For example, I want to drop a pant size (by when, I haven’t yet decided). To do that, I’ll need to drink less soda and more water, get more exercise and more rest, and stop pigging out so often (calorie control). And I also want to write a 50,000 word novel outside of NaNoWriMo. Well, I hate to admit it, but those two activities, currently and in my world, are mutually exclusive. They do not coexist. Writing is staying up late and not getting enough sleep and drinking to much caffeine to assist in it all. Healthy is sleeping in all my spare time and overdosing on water and making fifteen trips to the bathroom in a day at work.

But if I made drinking more water a habit, say for two months, and that’s all I focused on. Forget the sleep, soda, food, and exercise (or if not forget, at least not focus on exclusively). Concentrate on getting all my water in every day until it is a habit I stop thinking about and simply continue. Then suddenly adding in exercise to the mix isn’t so difficult. And once that’s a habit, I can try working writing into my schedule.

Just an example, but you get the idea.

New Year’s Resolutions in the past have consisted of:

  1. Give up soda
  2. Sleep more
  3. Stop biting nails (got that one several years ago, FWIW)
  4. Write more
  5. Journal every day
  6. Write two novels this year (had that one last year)
  7. Et cetera

That’s a small sample, but perhaps you can see how even trying to remember to do those things all at the same time would be difficult.

I haven’t got it all ironed out yet, and you’ll probably see more of these posts in the next week from me. I’m recreating Chris’ spreadsheet because his wasn’t working for me, and this is an ordeal in itself. Trying to find enough time (and attention) to complete it is still a challenge, but I know I can make it work. All the while I’m competing with website ideas, a secondary business idea, and oh yeah! My family needs my attention too in all of this.

Plus, you know, Christmas.

So we’ll see how it goes. Perhaps it will proceed better than planned.

Planning Your Year

0 comments By Nicki Filed in Business, Editorial, Financial, Personal Enrichment, Planning Tagged with , , December 10th, 2009 @ 6:00 am

planningOkay, for a blog that at one point (not too long ago) was supposed to be purely about planning, I’m not a very good planner. Since then (very recently), this has sort of morphed into a personal essay blog. I feel like I’m driving a college student around that wants to try everything out on their way to figuring out what they really want to do with their life. I’m going to let that be okay for now. Eventually it will become something, and right now I’m content to write whatever pleases me and see how things develop.

But that doesn’t feel like a good planning strategy. Chris Guillebeau has a good planning strategy, and I’m plodding my way through it right now. Here’s what I’ve gotten through my head so far.

Number one – making rigid plans you hate is bad. I have a habit of making rigid plans, and then feeling absolutely miserable when I can’t maintain them. That is a class act way of making oneself more depressed. Not a great way to actually meet your goals.

Number two – New Year’s Resolutions that are not resolute suck. Why make a huge list (as I tend to do) of things that can’t be accomplished? For me, New Year’s Resolutions are no good if you don’t start from January 1st and maintain them continuously for the entire year. “Exercise every day,” is a very easy resolution to break the first time you get sick, or get bored, or get stressed, or simply get too busy. Back to depression, irritation, and more stress. Nice.

Number three – how do you know when you’ve “written more”, “exercised more”, or “given more to charity”? If you can’t measure it, how do you know you’ve met it? Oh yeah, you can’t!

I’m all about this Annual Review, now that I’ve read through both articles by Chris. It’s all I want to do, even though there are many more things that I know I need to get done in these evenings before the end of the year. My hope is that this ritual, done in fits and bursts before January 1st will help me get my other tasks done in the new year.

Know what my first goal is going to be? Setting up a weekly schedule for my evenings so I can get some good habits started.

And then I’m going to try this.

The Alternative to Planning

0 comments By Nicki Filed in Article Response, Planning Tagged with , , , September 23rd, 2009 @ 8:42 am

Day PlannerI thought this article I found over at Simple. Organized. Life. was quite interesting. Go ahead and read it – I’ll wait for you to come back.

Done? Are you thinking, “Isn’t that sort of anti-Nicki?” Because I started this blog to be a blog about planning. Not because I’m especially good at it, mind you, but because I want to be.

But to be honest, I tend to live my life more like David describes. It’s not so much that I need to stop these things, I just tend to fail to do them. On reflection, more than once has it occurred to me when I compare my life with some of the people around me, I wonder if my life isn’t less stressful because I do tend to go with the flow.

It’s generally pretty easy for me to let go of conflict and anger. Sometimes it isn’t worth my time or attention, and I recognize that. Other times, the thing that angered me one moment simply doesn’t matter in the next and I can set it aside. I really just like to avoid conflict all together.

And mostly, I just want everyone to be happy.

But now, living my life the way I have, I find I’m envious of those friends of mine that did have plans coming out of high school, and who stuck with them, come hell or high water.  I look at those people who used to just be kids like me, like I still feel I am, and am envious of all they’ve achieved. One is a costumer for Broadway productions. Another manages a theater. A third just got her Ph.D. What happened to my life that the things I used to dream about never manifested?

So I feel that now I should, ought to, and need to plan to set my life back on some sort of track. Part of it is financial worry. Another fairly large part is concern that if I don’t pull things together, I’ll be a bad example for my kids. And another part is concern that if I don’t act now to do the things I want to do in life, I’ll be an old lady with no way to pursue her dreams.

I will have to say, though – there needs to be a healthy balance of planning and freedom on a person’s life. Too much reliance on structure isn’t good. You need to be able to go with the flow. On the other hand, if you aren’t planning for the future, there may not be much of one waiting for you when you get there.

Planning Frenzy

0 comments By Nicki Filed in Planning, Social Events Tagged with , , , September 15th, 2009 @ 10:33 pm

National Novel Writing Month begins November 1st, but the planning for the event begins long before that for most of the participants. When I was headed into my second year of NaNoWriMo, I started planning my novel a full month in advance. I actually couldn’t help myself, couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Now that I’m a co-Municipal Liaison for the Lehigh Valley area for the 2nd year, my planning has gone into full swing two months in advance. Once again, I just can’t stop thinking about it. What is our group going to do? How will I help motivate people? Will we raise enough money to help put the donor percentage above 10% this year?

It’s fun, but also a little scary when I stop to think about it. I worry that I won’t plan well enough, or that I’ll get too overwhelmed halfway through and not be able to either complete my novel or support my group well enough. I’m not a natural leader, and it’s easy for me to get overwhelmed and completely switch to passive rather than assertive when I feel I’m out of my element.

Hopefully, planning enough contingencies, making enough plans for things that can happen but that don’t necessarily have to happen, and maybe even making mini-schedules will help me get through this. And if I can get everything plotted out with my co-ML before October is over, so much the better. My notebook is going to be full before the month is over, I can feel it.

What Do You Plan For?

0 comments By Nicki Filed in Planning Tagged with , September 5th, 2009 @ 9:56 pm

Survey alert! If this is boring, skip to the end and please take two minutes to fill out my first ever survey! Thanks!

Hey, everybody! I’m wrapping up my first evening of my three day weekend with a lovely diet soda and aching feet. I actually only did some laundry today, and then brought some boxes back from my parents house (including my new sewing machine – yay!), but I feel like I ran a marathon. Things are really shaping up around the house, and as I watch things get put into place, I’m starting to plan how I really want things to be.

Today DH brought in many of the shelving units that are ubiquitous in our home, wherever that home may be. They’re assemble yourself models, but not like IKEA furniture, like particle board, fake wood stuff. I don’t like them. But right now that’s what they have, so I’m not going to complain (much).

With these shelves that are really DH’s and not so much mine, he has an idea and a plan of where he wants things to be. He was immediately able to visualize where things could, and should, be placed. My vision is a little slower in coming. I don’t know exactly what I want yet, or where I want it. I know that I want this wallpaper down and that I don’t particularly care for the shelves, but I don’t know how the room will be when it’s perfect for me.

So that got me thinking about planning. How I plan for certain things, and what kind of things do I plan for. And I’d like to know what you plan for. Like, right now. What do you have going on in your life that you’ve got a plan for if it happens? What do you plan for? Please, if you have a minute to check some boxes and type a little, go fill it out. I would really appreciate it!

The survey is set to end a week from Sunday at the stroke of midnight. Monday I’ll post the top responses, and at that point, I’ll be ready for another survey! Yay, I can’t wait!

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plan: to devise or project the realization or achievement of

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