Archive for the 'Setting Goals' Category

Coming back from crisis mode   

October 6, 2008 | Comments

Wow.  The last time I posted here was in April.  Life certainly got crazy there for a few months!  Just to give you a quick rundown:

• Miss Elizabeth joined our family in May
• We spent a marathon month or so adding 100 pages to Securing PHP Web Applications (Addison-Wesley - due out in December, 2008)
• Our school year started

And here we are.

Needless to say, after all that crisis I’m hitting a major organizational reset.  But I’ve learned something as well:  I’m a crisis junkie.  That rush of adrenaline you get from focusing on just one thing and ignoring the rest. I’ve learned something else as well.  Either I’m getting old, or maybe just getting wiser, but I’m not not getting that rush of adrenaline from sprinting toward a deadline and making it just under the wire.

This weekend I finished up a minor project for an editor I’ve worked with for a few years now.  The project is due on Tuesday, but I finished it on Saturday morning.  I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve ever handed this editor a finished project days before the deadline.  And you know, while crisis mode is exciting, this whole “smooth sailing” feeling ain’t bad either . . . I think I’m going to give it a try!

Anyhow, here’s what I’ve got planned for the next few weeks.  I have about half a dozen posts that are half written, but I don’t want to slam them all out there at once.  If you’re interested in one of these and don’t see me posting for a few days, please leave a comment here and remind me to stay focused!

Thanks!

Tricia

Nursery for a Princess - goals for this week   

March 11, 2008 | 6 Comments

Since we officially launched the nursery blogging project, Shauntelle and I have been hard at work planning this project. Well, I’ve been hard at work. I’m pretty sure Shauntelle has been having way too much fun to call it work!

Anyhow - here’s how this thing is gonna happen. I’m breaking it into two phases. Phase I is happening in March and involves all the projects that have to happen before I can even get into the room to start decorating. Don’t believe me? Check out these Before photos - warning, not for the faint of heart!

This is what happens when you encourage the kids to work independently . . .

Art is messy sometimes . . .

No kidding - this crazy room full of chaos and artwork is going to turn into a peaceful oasis for our little Princess. But not without a whole lot of work…All that stuff has to go somewhere. Currently, we’re using the room as an art room and computer room for the boys.

The plan is to clear out the unfinished side of the basement and convert that into the new art room. That will give them a lot more space, plus the concrete floor is easier to clean than carpet!

To move the art room downstairs, we have to move all the boxes we’re currently storing in that room into the larger storage unit we rented this weekend.

So to recap, this month’s projects are to clear out the room. This week, we’ll move the boxes out of the basement into the storage unit. Next week, we’ll move the art supplies into the totally reorganized art area in the basement. We’ll be setting up shelves and a drying area for their supplies and finished projects. Then we’ll move the computer desk out and clean the room from top to bottom.

Check back to see how we’re doing!

End of the month, time to plan!   

February 27, 2008 | Comments

It’s February 27. This Saturday is March 1.

So what? In my experience, the last few days of the month is the most crucial. If I scratch out time today or tomorrow to write out our budget for next month and plan the projects I know are coming up in March, odds are around 90% that we will stay withing budget and complete most or all of what we want to.

If I don’t get around to working up the budget and planning the month until sometime during the first week of March, guess what? First off, we will have already gone over budget one way or another. Second, I’ll feel like I’m playing catch-up all month long, and I won’t get nearly as much done as I’d like.

So that’s the goal for the next two days - write up a budget and plan out the projects I need to tackle in March.

Sprinting in a Marathon World   

February 25, 2008 | Comments

I’m a sprinter. As in, give me a short project that requires 100% of my time and energy over a long-term thing that only requires 10% any day. Unfortunately, life is all about the Marathon. So how does a confirmed Sprinter manage to finish a Marathon?

She starts by breaking down a Marathon project into Sprints. Take this blog for example. You might have noticed that despite my best intentions, I don’t post nearly as regularly as I’d like. I tend to be sporadic. I’d love to post something insightful or useful every weekday.

Ok, so now we have the starting line and the finish line mapped out:

Starting line: sporadic posts whenever something useful crosses my mind.
Finish line: useful posts 5 days per week.

At this point you’re probably sitting there asking, “So what’s the problem? Take 10 minutes and post - how hard is that??”

(It’s ok, I’m not offended. I’ve asked myself the same exasperated question over and over.) The only answer I have is this: “I have no clue why I can’t seem to sit down and write a simple blog post every morning.”

Wait! There it is - a clue to the problem. My original goal (starting small) was to post twice a week. That means, I have to sit and think about it. Did I post yet this week? I know, everybody tells you to start small, don’t set unrealistic goals at first. But I’m going to stand here and say just the opposite. Set big goals that fit into your routine. For me, it will be easier to post every single day than it was to post once a week. Why? Because I don’t have to think about it. It will become a habit - every afternoon, I’ll post something to the blog, then move on to working on the next short story or the current chapter in my nonfiction book.

So here’s the next question. If you’ve read my blog, what would you like to see more of? What types of issues are you curious about? I’m working on an editorial calendar so that you’ll know what to expect when you swing by on a Tuesday afternoon, and so that when I’m staring at the blank screen on Friday I’ll at least have some idea of what to write about.

The Weakest Link   

February 22, 2008 | Comments

We’ve all heard the phrase “a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.” Well, this week I made a very revealing discovery. When it comes to keeping a household running smoothly, there are two basic methods:

• The CEO method, in which there is one primary person in charge of keeping the whole system running smoothly.
• The Co-Op method, in which everyone has responsibility for some part of the system, and enough knowledge of the rest of the system to step in if one person is unavailable.

Wanna take a quick guess as to which method most of us use?

In our house, I’m the organized one. I accept that. I’m really good at planning, organizing, and coming up with new ways of getting things done. I’m also only one person, and a pretty average one at that. I don’t have some extraordinary gift for squeezing 25 hours out of the day.

My family is generally good about helping out - as long as I tell them exactly what I need done, and give them a deadline to have it done by. Unfortunately, when I got sick early this week and ended up spending three days essentially on bedrest, everything ground to a screeching halt. Literally. By Wednesday evening, the family ate frozen pizza off of paper plates. (Not that there’s anything wrong with either frozen pizza or paper plates on occasion!) Laundry hasn’t been done since Monday. Don’t ask about the shortcuts we’ve taken in homeschooling this week!

The CEO method of household management has its benefits - you have a single point of contact for household management questions, and well, sometimes management by committee just doesn’t work.

If several members of your family are good at organizing and managing, the Co-op method might just work for you - one person is responsible for laundry, another deals with meals, someone else does the planning.

It’s a great idea, but a pure Co-op method won’t work in our family so we need a hybrid approach. And we have a hard deadline to implement it - if I’m still occupying the corner office in this household when the baby arrives in May . . . I don’t want to see the chaos I’ll come home to!

So here’s the plan.

I’m expanding upon my current household notebook, and will document a lot of the processes that I “just know” right now - like the stuff that I know goes on every week’s grocery list, and how long we can let dishes or laundry go before nobody can eat or get dressed. The overall goal here is to ensure than when/if I am gone for several days at a time, the entire household won’t grind to a halt again.

Wish me luck! This isn’t a small project, and I’ll post progress here as I go along.

There’s no such thing as a small victory   

February 11, 2008 | 1 Comment

A victory is a victory, period!

This weekend, I had a pretty ambitious list of stuff to get done. This was the first weekend we were home after traveling the for the past two weekends, so I was in major catch-up mode. On Friday night, I made a comprehensive list of everything that needed to get done, appointments we had, everything. I wrote it on a big sheet of newsprint (borrowed from the kids’ art supplies!) and tacked it up on the living room wall.

By Sunday afternoon, I was exhausted and convinced that we had spent all weekend running and gotten nothing done. Until I started marking off all the tasks that we had accomplished, and I realized that we had actually finished well over half of what I planned. Considering the ambitiousness of the plan, getting half of it done is a real victory!

When we label our victories over the craziness that is life “small” we minimize the time, effort, and creativity that went into those accomplishments! There’s no such thing as a “small” victory! Take the time to celebrate your victories and see how much more motivated you are to keep on going, even on days when your motivation is practically non-existent.

Hitting the reset button   

February 4, 2008 | Comments

Last week was crazy, and I haven’t a clue as to why. (Well, that’s not actually true - but we’ll get to that in a minute.) By Thursday morning, I found myself staring at a chaotic, cluttered house and two little boys demanding to know what we would do for homeschool that morning.

Uh . . .

Don’t even get me started on what we ate for dinner last week. Let’s just say Pizza Hut made their weekly sales goals. Then add in a freak snowstorm that kept everybody home on Friday and an unplanned trip to visit relatives for the weekend, just for grins.

It was a crazy week. But the thing is, none of this was all that earth-shattering. It certainly wasn’t enough to reduce a normally competent adult (or so my friends tell me) into a quivering mass unable to make the smallest decision. So what on Earth happened?

I was tired last Sunday night. I didn’t feel like spending an hour or two on schedule wrangling, menu planning (let alone grocery shopping), or resetting my household systems to get ready for the week. The result? I spent the entire week making it up as I went along. Unfortunately, that’s an exhausting way to live! Trust me. Maybe it works for some people, but for me it’s a one-way ticket to mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion. I didn’t get any more than the bare minimum of writing done either.

So last night, I hit the reset button, and that’s the whole point of this post. I’d like to share with you how I pulled out of the beginnings of a tailspin.

First, I know that I have four major responsibilities in life (all of roughly the same importance):

• Writing
• Homeschooling
• Running a household
• Maintaining a healthy marriage

I set out a separate piece of paper for each category, then listed out everything that I knew I needed to get done for that category, including the raft of things from the week before that I didn’t accomplish. I find it helpful to break things down further into subcategories - fiction and nonfiction, each subject we cover in homeschool, etc.

Once I had all that down on paper, I could start to feel my head start to clear. Sure, I had a full week’s worth of tasks laid out on each of the four papers, but I’m good at ignoring trivial little details like that!

Next, out came my daily planner sheets. I’ve already got sections laid out for each of my four major categories, so I know that I have blocks of time set aside for each broad area of my life. Then it’s just a matter of fitting everything on my master to-do lists into the available time chunks on my daily planner sheets.

Sometimes it doesn’t all fit, so rather than kid myself into believing that I’ll somehow accomplish 6 hours worth of work in 2, I have a few blocks of time in my schedule that I can use for work if I have to. I’d rather not - I really don’t like working late at night, but if that’s what I have to do, that’s what I do. It’s the price I pay for not getting anything done last week, or for not working efficiently during my normal working hours.

Finally, I looked around the house and decided what absolutely had to be done in order to have the family functioning for the beginning of the week. The living room (where we do homeschool) had to be tidied and vacuumed. The dishes had to be done and there had to be clean laundry for everyone for Monday.

All told, it took me about 2 1/2 hours yesterday to get the schedule figured out, a menu and grocery list, and to do the minimum housework required to keep me sane on Monday. Not exactly how I wanted to spend my Sunday evening, but it feels so good to wake up Monday morning without that knot in the pit of my stomach wondering how on Earth I’m going to crawl out from under the massive pile of backlogged work.

So here’s to a week of fresh starts - if I can do it, so can you!

Life happens - and it doesn’t care how much work you have to do.   

January 24, 2008 | 5 Comments

Yesterday was one of those days for me. I had a reasonable amount of work to do and time blocked off in my schedule to do it. Dinner was in the crock pot by 9am, it looked like smooth sailing.

Ha!

(That’s the sound of the Universe laughing at me, by the way).

By the end of the day, the only thing keeping me sane was the promise of a hot lavender bubble bath after the kids went to bed. But today shall be better. I’d like to share something with you from a source that’s very close to me in the mornings: my coffee mug.

Believe in yourself - in the power you have to control your own life, day by day . . .
Believe in the strength that you have deep inside, and your faith will help show you the way . . .
Believe in tomorrow and what it will bring –
Let a hopeful heart carry you through –
For things will work out if you trust and believe.
There’s no limit to what you can do!

That mug was given to me a couple of years ago by a friend and fellow writer. I always pull this mug out of the cupboard when I need a reminder that I am stronger than I feel, and capable of more than just making it through the day.

Being gentle with yourself - “Blue Monday”   

January 21, 2008 | 5 Comments

Here we are - starting the fourth week of January. One of my goals for this year was to post to this blog three times a week. The last post I put up was on New Year’s Eve!

I got up this morning, turned on the local news and saw the headline “Blue Monday.” Apparently this day is the most depressing day of the whole year - between cold, gray weather, credit card bills coming in from December’s spending splurges, and broken New Year’s Resolutions - suddenly the third Monday of January feels less like a new beginning and more like the first day of a long year of the same old problems as last year.

But that’s the great thing about Monday mornings. It’s always fresh start!

Join me this week in beating the January blues! To get things started, I’m posting my own list of goals for 2008. Please, leave a comment with your own goals - and forget whether you’ve already “blown” them. We’re starting fresh today.

My 2008 Goals:

• Finish writing my nonfiction book, Securing PHP Web Applications (by March)
• Complete edits on Securing PHP Web Applications (by May)
• Write Second Chances, my in-progress novel (around July)
• Implement a steady promotions plan based on the advice of my brilliant publicist, Shauntelle Hamlett of Get Known Promotions including posting to my blog at least twice a week. You’re all witnesses now - I will be posting here on Mondays and Wednesdays at a minimum, and hopefully on Fridays as well.

What are your goals for 2008?