Dropped the ball again!

Last year, I wrote a little about why I don’t believe in resolutions.

A long time ago I gave up making New Year’s resolutions and switched over to giving myself goals. That may sound like mere semantics, but the two things seem fundamentally different to me. A resolution is a destination; a goal is a journey. If I make progress on my goal, I can count that as a win whereas all I can do with a resolution is fail. I mean, I suppose I could succeed, but I haven’t yet.

2014 was not a good year for me. In many ways both personal and professional, I leave the year feeling decidedly worse off than I began, and I don’t see a particular end to the problems that have cropped up.

So, yeah, if I had set a bunch of resolutions for myself, right now I would would be feeling even worse. But I made it through and now I have some goals for 2015. But I also have new plans on how to achieve more of what I want to achieve for the year. I was fascinated when my friend Bria mentioned “Flexi-Goals” and begged her to talk about it. So she did. And I think it looks great. I am totally stealing it.

I also bought myself a planner. For years I’ve used a Filofax A5 size planner, but I don’t love the paper (in fact, I hate it, so I took to printing out my own calendars and cutting/ punching them to fit) and after the ruptured discs in my neck in 2013, I gave up carrying it because it was so heavy with the leather cover and all the stuff I would stick in. This year, I bought myself an Erin Condren planner. I don’t love the paper in this one, either (I know, I am picky), but I do really like the layouts. For those of you who also want to get organized and productive this year, you might want to check out my Pinterest board of planners and organization.

Someone also suggested a bone-simple way of organizing your goals/tasks that I love. Write them down on sticky notes, one per note. Then in your notebook/planner/whatever, put the most urgent ones on the left page. Everything else goes on the right. As you accomplish the things on the left page, you can toss the notes, making room for the ones on the right.

This is an example of a system, which brings me to the last thing I am going to say on this topic. One one of the pins on my board of organization, one of the pieces of advice is “create systems, not goals.” That is, focus on the journey, and not the destination.

And have a happy, healthy, productive 2015.