Paradigm shift. It's been a little over one week since I started my goal-oriented 30 day plan. 20 pages of a book, 5 minutes of silence, and one "thing" every day.
Focusing on those 3 things every day has given me a new, focused, creative, and more goal-oriented way of looking forward to my time outside of work. I finished Anthony Bourdain's Medium Raw and am nearly half way through Malcom Gladwell's The Tipping Point after several months of struggling to be consistent in my reading. I'm finally making some progress on my "to read next" stack of books here at the ranch.
As my work day nears its end, I include my coworkers and hear about their goals looking for an idea of what new task I will complete that evening. Sitting quietly for 5 minutes feels remarkably different from day to day and has become a way of checking in with my body and mind to get a feel for the state-of-affairs of my being that day. Sometimes it works better than others, but I think it's always better than not having stopped to notice.
In focusing on choosing, beginning, and completing "a thing" every day, I've noticed that my follow-through on other tasks that I notice in my personal life has started getting better (washing my dishes, making a phone call to family that I'd been thinking about, picking up my house.) I still procrastinate on plenty things, but I'm more likely to act to complete them rather than dwelling on how much I would like to be getting done. In conversation, I have at least one fresh thing to talk about every day at a time in the season where some social interactions tend to stagnate or always end up on the same subjects -- usually our opinions of coworkers. (Not the most life-giving subject.)
And the flexibility of choosing any "thing" to complete that day has led to some interesting conversations and time spent with other people on staff here. Here are a few of my favorite "things" from the past week:
Focusing on those 3 things every day has given me a new, focused, creative, and more goal-oriented way of looking forward to my time outside of work. I finished Anthony Bourdain's Medium Raw and am nearly half way through Malcom Gladwell's The Tipping Point after several months of struggling to be consistent in my reading. I'm finally making some progress on my "to read next" stack of books here at the ranch.
As my work day nears its end, I include my coworkers and hear about their goals looking for an idea of what new task I will complete that evening. Sitting quietly for 5 minutes feels remarkably different from day to day and has become a way of checking in with my body and mind to get a feel for the state-of-affairs of my being that day. Sometimes it works better than others, but I think it's always better than not having stopped to notice.
In focusing on choosing, beginning, and completing "a thing" every day, I've noticed that my follow-through on other tasks that I notice in my personal life has started getting better (washing my dishes, making a phone call to family that I'd been thinking about, picking up my house.) I still procrastinate on plenty things, but I'm more likely to act to complete them rather than dwelling on how much I would like to be getting done. In conversation, I have at least one fresh thing to talk about every day at a time in the season where some social interactions tend to stagnate or always end up on the same subjects -- usually our opinions of coworkers. (Not the most life-giving subject.)
And the flexibility of choosing any "thing" to complete that day has led to some interesting conversations and time spent with other people on staff here. Here are a few of my favorite "things" from the past week:
- Cut, buff, and paint my nails. (Housekeeping supplies are death for nails. So is a cold, dry climate. Making a bed with splitting fingernails is awful. Buffing helped the problem monumentally. Plus now my hands are significantly more "guestable" for meals and activities with guests.)
- Teach someone how to skate ski. (Goals involving other people are tricky since if they change their plans, you can't accomplish your task. I've found in my committing and better follow-through, people have been more likely to commit and follow through with plans with me. This day I ended up having a lesson for two gals on my crew. They both love it now!)
- Remove 5 bags of stuff from my house. (Donate or throw away. I got on a roll end ended up closer to 6 or 7 bags.)
- Empty my e-mail inbox. (It is now, naturally, filling up again...but responding to 3 messages is much less daunting than sorting through the hundreds that were there before!)
- Memorize the first half of 1 Corinthians 13. (This was at the suggestion of one of my coworkers, it's a chapter from the Bible about love and is rather love-ly. I didn't realize how long it had been since I memorized something!)
- Teach someone how to knit. (We're going to town together tomorrow to buy knitting supplies. Not only was it fun to teach something- now that the "training" phase of the season is pretty much done for housekeeping, but I got excited about knitting again. We talked about art and learning, and she agreed to think of something to teach me something of her choosing sometime soon.)
- Invest in a mid-cap mutual fund. (I'd been thinking about this for a month or two and had done some research, but this day I did some last minute googling, decided on a fund (VGHCX), and went for it. Along the way I ended up using Morningstar's Instant X-ray to analyze how balanced my investments are and came across some blogs on frugal living and how to save money. I've noticed in a lot of these "things," I end up looking up related information or socializing with people while doing the task or branching from that task into other related tasks. Choosing "a thing" each day helps give me a way of focusing my energy into a more specific place, and then expanding into other interests or tasks or subjects from that starting point.)
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