Gratitude post for day #7…Today I am grateful for crockpots. We did a simple recipe this morning, or rather Andrea did (I just chose the recipe options and did the groceries, she assembled stuff). But tonight when we got home, dinner was ready. We don’t use it near enough, particularly in the winter. But a goal of mine is to do it once a week at least until Spring.
Onward in the journey…
The thirteenth item on my vaguebooking list was “13. Thirteen years and counting”. The year 2015 marks 13 years that Andrea and I have been together. We were also married on the 13th of September, back in ’08, so this will be our 7th anniversary.
We swore that we wouldn’t become home bodies that never went out anymore, and that is certainly true when it comes to restaurants. We eat out a lot. Mostly simple places with Jacob. But, to my mind, that’s not enough. We have very little “just the two of us” time, instead of “all 3” time. And as with the rest of the things I talked about, I feel like we’re just drifting along. Not in a bad way, not at all. More content. Just perhaps a little too content with the status quo.
So, 2015 is the year I commit random acts of romance. Maybe without out the random part as much, after all I am a planner. Nor do I want to mention everything here since Andrea may one day be totally bored on a bus and read my blog. Shhh, it could happen. Just saying, if she does, I don’t want her to know all the plans in advance. Obviously.
However, some are obvious ones that she’ll have to know about. Like the big one, which is supporting her this fall when she takes off work to finish her M.Ed. It’s going to be a long semester for all three of us, with a lot of disruption in our schedules, workloads, etc. But it’s part of the commitment, to make it work for all of us, without her killing herself either.
I’m also committing to more of Jacob’s routine, which hopefully should ease burden a bit on her, as well as taking over a good part of the meal planning so it’s a little more planned for longer periods of time, with built in flexibility. We’ve been running on a 2-3 day cycle the last little while, so we got back to the 2-week plan this past week, and will likely bump it up to a 4-week extended plan to guarantee more variety within weeks. It also helps with my grocery shopping.
We have an entertainment book, and I’m going to pick a bunch of restaurants in advance and then we’ll schedule regular outings. I had hoped to do Stratford this summer, but didn’t really see any home run choices that I wanted. Hopefully we’ll do a play or two next year (hopefully after Xmas!), although we likely won’t have time for the NAC Pops series. We are however doing that now, which gives us at least one outing per month or so up until June sans cubby. For the entertainment book outings, many of them will still involve J, but at least they’ll be different outings.
I’m also hoping she enjoys the “Daddy and me” nights with Jacob, and takes advantage of them to do something more than just hang out by herself out at home (although that’s always fun too).
I have a few other things in mind, but again, won’t be mentioning them in advance. Commit to the quest — romance now!
Given my obvious commitment to setting goals, my wife passed along a new tool called “The Year Planning Booklet” from YearCompass. I am going through it page by page, and it’s a pretty good tool. Let me tell you why I like it.
First and foremost, it starts with a review of the past year. You might think that sounds both obvious and counter-intuitive — you’re looking forward, why are you looking back? The reason you look back is the exact way they start the booklet. They have you identify big events and/or meetings of the last year. Which allows you to basically then categorize them into groups to show where you spent your time, what milestones you considered significant. Note that your memory is a really bad source of information — you might have thought, “Hey, I did a great job on meeting with my financial advisor” only to go back through your calendar and realize that you blew them off more than you met with them. Evidence-based analysis is key, and reviewing your last year is pretty good at providing that evidence.
Second, I really like the idea that you write out some simple declarative sentences that summarize various aspects of the year. For example, declaring what your wisest decision / biggest lesson / biggest risk / biggest surprise / biggest service / biggest achievement was during the last year also helps you think in terms of plans vs. reality, static vs. growth. I also like the fact that they go beyond that to nuance the types of “growths” that were possible. Partnerships, influences, best “moments”, what you needed to forgive, etc.
All of which culminates in the decision to close the book on your previous year. It’s done. Let it go (without the cheesy Frozen song). The analysis is a little long for most people, but it’s a decent set of questions to get you thinking before you get to the hard part — setting yourself up for the new year, which is the second part of the booklet.
I like too the idea of dreaming big at the start of the year. It worked for me this year (2015, the year I commit to the quest), but I confess that it won’t work for most people. Very few people know what their goals are, let alone an overarching theme. For many, it’s too big. However, the second page of the new year looks at what you see in family / private life (green energy); work, studies, profession (red energy); belongings (green energy); relaxations, hobbies, creativity (yellow energy); friends, community, service (green energy); health, fitness (red energy); intellectual (blue energy); emotional, spiritual (green or yellow energy); finances (blue or red energy); and a bucket list (any of the four energies). I find it a bit heavy on the green for my taste, but most personal goals approaches do this, reflecting the fact that “home is where the happy is”. It then takes those pieces and has you schedule them throughout the year. Also a good approach. For me, I use the same idea for the Creativity Challenge that I run with friends on Facebook. In it, people commit to certain projects for a single month (one month on, one month off). But it allows you to break larger ideas (Be more creative! Learn to sing!) into more digestible chunks and assign them to individual months.
I’m not as impressed with the next two pages of the booklet that focus on “magical triplets”, as I think in some cases they simply will not apply. Plus I don’t think there is any magic to the power of 3, outside of the Charmed TV series. Plus 12 categories is a bit heavy for most people. Planning shouldn’t tire you out, in my view, it should be short enough that when you’re done you’re energized, not exhausted.
It then concludes with a 30 day challenge, with some suggested items in it. Personally, I’d replace it with the Seinfeld method instead. Lasts longer, and easier to understand. Lots of people miss a day in a 30d challenge and then call it quits, whereas the Seinfeld method keeps trucking along.
I do however really like the ending — a word (or a phrase) for the year ahead. In my case, 2015’s phrase is “Commit to the Quest”. It reminds me what I’m trying to do, how much I’m aiming to do.
A good tool overall. And maybe might inspire me to write my own guide for next year in a similar vein! 🙂
One of my goals for 2015 is to think more coherently (i.e. plan) for online learning that I’m interested in. I have little interest in a formal degree at this point, nor even sitting in lecture halls. I have far more interest in online options, at least where it is not short-term or local or highly specialized (like a camera course).
For example, I basically see three main options for myself. First and foremost is the ad hoc stuff of TedX talks. I don’t take near enough advantage of the posts over there.
Secondly, iTunes and Youtube have lots of podcasts and videos where one expert or another has done the curation for me of some decent content, distilling it down to the bits I probably care about, and giving me enough of an overview that if I want to go further, I’ll have a good starting point.
Last, there is the dual-prong options of downloadable courses (such as The Great Courses) and online courses (such as are Coursera). For those who aren’t familiar with either, here’s the bumpf.
The Great Courses option is designed as a “cream of the crop” approach to lectures. Based on a variety of sources of info to identify who the best professors are around the world, they then hire them to record their lectures in audio or video format and then sell the courses to people. They have a huge catalog that they send out six times a year with massive discounts listed — for example, it is not uncommon for 75% discounts off the web-listed price. I’ve seen samples of some of the courses and they are pretty good.
Coursera takes a different approach — they offer a central repository for universities offering potentially-large enrolment online courses, usually with two options. One option is you pay, get graded, and get a certificate for finishing the course; second is free and you just audit the courses.
For me, the lists of courses are like fueling a drug habit. I ran through the Coursera listing over the last little while, and my list of courses in which I might be interested, noting that I was actually HARD in whittling out ones that sounded okay but really were a bit too off in their approach, is still quite large. 126 courses large. Of course, I could never DO that many courses, but it feels a lot like my undergrad where there were so many options and electives to initially consider. And these aren’t slouch courses — some of them are offered by Yale, Princeton, UofT, UBC, etc. My full list of possible Coursera courses is below. Unfortunately, many of them are not currently scheduled yet this year, and some of them are too long to sustain my interest, but I’m probably going to commit to at least three this year.
My interests fall into some pretty simple categories, except for the long nature of the original list:
Now I just have to get around to choosing my courses!
Gratitude post for day #6…A strange idea, to give thanks for a simple instrument like a laptop, but I am. For Boxing Day, I picked up a new laptop. Primarily it is for me to use in the basement, and around the house. Occasionally, I’ll take it with me to a coffee shop or something. However, for work I have a smaller netbook that will do the job. It just wasn’t up to snuff for the extra work I do on it at home, and there are times I just want to surf and type while watching TV (my PC in the office isn’t quite so portable). Tonight, for instance, I watched an episode of the show Forever while I typed away on some stuff. I’m not completely set up on the laptop yet, still need to add some software and figure out how to easily toggle the touchpad on and off, but it was great. Andrea will likely use it too for school in the fall as she finishes her Masters, my only concern then being battery life for her. Nice large screen though 🙂
Onward in the journey…
