Time to do a quick update, here at the end of week 7.
For my astronomy, considering that I haven’t actually dug the telescope out and got it set up yet, mostly because I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that I’m a fair-weather (i.e. warm-weather) astronomer only, I’m doing okay. I’ve played around with a few things, even managed to get a photo of the Mars / Venus / Moon conjunction on the weekend. While I had hoped to be doing something astronomy-related at least once a week, I’m at a combined total of 3 so far.
For the kitchen reno, we got going a few weeks ago with our first meeting with the designer, but haven’t heard anything in the last two weeks (contractor needs to come talk to us about moving a wall, see what the options are). I’m going to follow up this week and see about booking them for a specific 2 weeks in the summer.
I managed to sort some of my photos a few weeks back, but then stalled, which is same for my backup schedule. I’ve taken a couple of photos and managed to get a bunch of work done on a photobook, but nothing in the last couple of weeks. I also started on the origami in mid-January, although I originally planned that for later in the year.
Other than that, it’s been a pretty light 7 weeks on blue — nothing on my active use of the tracker, “honey do” list, scanning, ripping, knitting, learning to juggle, or planning for a meteor shower.
Overall, I’d have to rate my progress at a very weak yellow, bordering on red.
Let’s check in on how I’m doing on my goals…Spoiler alert — the big news is under the yellow goals!
Starting with the Blue / Mind goals, I’ve done a bit on both of my two big goals: re-engaged with astronomy (Mercury and Venus observing with the naked eye, collimated my scope, charged batteries, and sorted out my astro gear) and exchanged emails with the contractor for the kitchen renovation –> green for the past two weeks. On day-to-day stuff, I’ve started using the tracker, organized a photo book, did a partial backup, and enrolled in a Coursera course, but nothing official on the Honey-Do list, photo scanning, or ripping –> yellow for the past two weeks. On my bucket list, I started doing some origami, but nothing on photography, knitting, juggling or the meteor shower –> yellow for the past two weeks. Overall, I’d rate my mind goals at YELLOW for my early progress.
For the Green / Heart goals, my first big one has been re-engaging with Jacob. I have had two Boys Nights with him, although the project one was a bust. I had hoped to make snowflakes with him (construction paper with hole cut out for a picture, trimmed edges, wool on top) but I described the project to him on the weekend, and he did it without me, so he had no interest when it came to Boys Night to do it again. He liked the idea apparently, and couldn’t wait. This past week though we had an impromptu games night while Andrea was at NAC, and when we were done, we talked about what he likes in various games and what he wants in the game we’re going to design together in February. It’s a decent start. But I’m not stepping up for the night-time routine as much as I had intended, so overall of yellow. For the random acts of romance, my second big goal, I have to grade myself a Red so far…Andrea and I have done a few more things together, but it all came to a screeching halt on Saturday night when I was sick, and had to bail on our NAC date. Fortunately, a friend was able to go at the last-minute. Between the two, I’ll give myself an overall yellow so far. For the day-to-day activities, I’ve organized a wings outing for this coming week, updated the AstroPontiac site for the WP software, did a bit of work on my social campaign for November, and researched a bit of my charity plan. Nothing on siblings, corn roast planning –> Overall yellow. Which gives me an overall yellow for the category.
For the Red / Body goals, I pretty much suck. I’m way behind on my exercises and I’ve done almost nothing on organizing my physical journey — overall flaming red. On the day-to-day stuff, I haven’t got myself organized for french nor found a new dentist or doctor, but I did do my sleep test when my squirrels were knocking at the door, so I’m giving myself a yellow. However, I did nothing on organizing myself to give blood, use a rappel/zipline, or for a polar plunge, so again RED. Which leaves me with an overall red for the category.
Despite my “failures” above, I’m not really surprised. My priority for this month so far has been my goals in the Yellow / Soul category. I’ll go in reverse order, as I want to save my writing challenge to the end. I hit the ground running on my creativity challenge in the day-to-day stuff, working on clip art, two goals memes, finding a Daddy and Jacob project, posting photos from December, doing a photobook, and designing trackers for goals and the Creativity Challenge itself. On blogging, my goal was 10 new blogs; I did 32. In 18 days. For reviews of TV episodes, my goal was 10 for the yearly average but my Creativity Challenge boosted that temporarily to 25 for two weeks –> I did 35. With more pending. I’ve only done 4 memes so far, out of my 200 for the year, but I didn’t really expect to start this soon. I’m about 2/3 of the way through the first book (Monogram Murders), I’ve completed 11 entries in my Gratitude Journal with an impressive 8 entries in a row, and I’ve tried out 2 recipes with Andrea. And as mentioned, Jacob and I are working on the game design I wasn’t planning on starting until February. On the other side, nothing on movie reviews or book reviews, or the photography / movie weekend / HR guide. Nor have I done anything on my Spiritual questions quest for the year. Nevertheless, if this was my only progress for the month, I’d still give myself an overall Green. That list alone is enough to give me a sense of accomplishment.
But all of this has been a side-show to the main attraction, which is my ultra-scary, how-the-heck-am-I-going-to-reach “500,000 words” goal. Working it backwards, that’s 10,000 words a week x 50 weeks. So I have to put up about 10K words a week to stay on track.
Week 1 launched with a vengeance — 2 memes, 8 gratitude entries, 9 reviews of TV episodes, 26 posts, 35 e-mails, and innumerable numbers of Facebook posts and some other projects combined to give me, wait for it, 24,620 words, with 19,500 coming just from the blog. Week 2 was a bit slower, and I confess I didn’t meet my writing target — I only accumulated 7054 words, with 5500 coming from the blog and the rest coming from Facebook, emails, TV episode reviews and memes. But overall? My grand total for the two weeks is 31,674. Not including a few reviews and things that will post in the next few days already. That’s two-thirds of my previous total on the blog over the last few years, and way above my yearly average alone. That’s a big GREEN for the category by itself, although the others were already green.
So, summing up, Yellow / Yellow / Red / Green. Since my green is as impressive as my red is sucky, I’m going to call it a very promising yellow so far. I have to admit, I’m surprised. I lost momentum after the first 11 days, as I started week 2. And this week I’ve mailed in my performance in a few places. Yet, overall, it’s already looking promising for my month-end report, with two more weeks of progress to come!
I like this new PolyWogg 4.0. He’s a productive little tadpole. I feel almost giddy! 🙂
I’m still tracking progress on each goal by month, trying out the new tracking mechanism for the year. And it is helping me visualize my goals better this year…only time will tell if it improves performance though. March should have been a good month for me, as work quieted down a bit and my goals were firmly established, and I did make progress — active on more items in total, upped my “green” rating overall. Mostly though, I’m happy about initial progress on a HUGE “soul” element…see why below!
Progress on Mind: My planning guide is done, printed, and I’ve got my trackers up and running, definitely “green” and I expect it will hover around green for the year (might dip to yellow occasionally). We did get most of our powder room done, although that is more a gift from Andrea’s parents than my own effort. A few things left to do to tick the box. I had hoped to have the ETFs done by now, along with taxes, and more done on sorting books, but didn’t do much on those this month.
Progress on Heart: I continued my support to Andrea on her M.Ed., although that is mostly just making sure she has her night free for her class. I should be doing more somehow, but not sure what that is yet…we usually divide up our chores, and there are certain jobs that are “blue” jobs, like shoveling snow and cutting grass, and some that are “pink” jobs like washing dishes, because I hate washing … and then others that are up for grabs, like laundry. And while I have been trying to do the dishes a bit more (since Andrea has been doing more laundry, a blu-ish job), I don’t think “dishes” counts as career support. I helped out a bit more at the start of the month on Jacob’s nighttime routine, but not so much near the end of the month when a cold and some blood pressure spikes just wiped me out. Equally, I fell off the wagon near the end of the month for making my lunch rather than buying it every day. And I’m annoyed that I haven’t finished the Pontiac website yet. No progress yet on a Remembrance Day party, but then again, it’s MARCH! hehehe I did kick in some cash for one of my universities as a charitable donation, and successfully earmarked it for a specific program to support.
Progress on Soul: My big “success” this month was on a specific goal. I’ve got a mixed history for spiritualism and religion, and to be honest, I’m not entirely sure what I believe anymore. Or, from another perspective, my beliefs are not entirely coherent. So I came up with a unique idea — defining my core beliefs by coming up with 12 questions and asking myself them throughout the year. I’ve started work on coming up with the 12 questions first, which in and of itself is no easy matter. And while this might take awhile, I’ve also enlisted the aid of an expert — my friend Hope is a Catholic military chaplain, and I’m going to grill her like a fish about better questions. Heck, she’s got professional training in this, I might as well bribe her with food and cut my learning curve. As I said when I asked her, I’m not looking for her to give me answers, just help me come up with some better questions. I’m pretty happy with my approach so far, and I’ve got the first few questions starting to shape up pretty well. Look for more blogs on this when I go to answer them. I’ve even recruited friends on FB to help me come up with better questions.
Separate from that, I’ve done a little more work on my business model for writing, and organized myself a bit better for my HR guide (including for the actual cover), but not much tangible to show for it yet. Most of the rest are “reds” as I haven’t done anything on them yet, but I also gave myself a “red” for having a regular “new recipe” cooking night as Andrea and I have defaulted a LOT in recent weeks to not planning our dinners, just mostly doing responsive “day of” cooking that is really unexciting. Need to get back into a better groove for that, as well as ensuring the “new recipe” nights.
Progress on Body: As with January and February, most of March was a washout. And I had a bad experience with my blood pressure spiking near the end of the month — cold and flu remedies can elevate blood pressure, but Tylenol-based ones tend to cause less impact. So, I bopped along taking my Tylenol Cold/Flu stuff for three days and started to feel better, only to have my blood pressure spike and give me really really bad headaches at night. Not fun, and a little scary until I realized what was causing it. In the end, not super problematic, easy to adjust (stop taking the damn cold pills!), but the rest of the first quarter is a wash. Definitely need to be more active, and happy that the warmer weather is starting to appear.
Overall Results
January: 32 inactive; 0 RED; 0 YELLOW; 2 GREEN = 5.8% for month, 5.8% for year
February: 25 inactive; 0 RED; 6 YELLOW; 3 GREEN = 8.8% for month, 8.8% for year
March: 17 inactive; 7 RED; 6 YELLOW; 4 GREEN = 11.8% for month, 8.8 % for year
I’m not normally quite so anal-retentive in that I want to measure “progress” in this way, but I thought it might help me visualize it better this year…Not a lot of progress for January and February, but not surprising since I just formally established the new goals.
Progress on Mind: Didn’t accomplish much in January other than another presentation on my HR guide, this time tailored to the post-Strategic Review world, which went well. For February, I updated my planning guide, did some financial work on ETFs and RRSPs, and sorted my books in the basement in at least a rudimentary fashion.
Progress on Heart: I had a really slow start on the HEART items…For January, about the only progress I made was continued support to Andrea on her M.Ed. For February, that continued, and I did a little bit more on trying to take my lunch and/or eat a little healthier, plus registered the website for AstroPontiac.
Progress on Soul: January was pretty much a complete washout, and for February, the only thing I moved forward on was a little bit of research for a dinosaur book for Jacob.
Progress on Body: Like with SOUL, January was a washout. For February, I followed up on some health stuff (a head MRI to explain some headache and odd symptoms going on) and adjusted my sleep times a bit better. Not great progress overall though.
Just over a year ago, I did my annual personal “goal-setting”. Many of the comments I received on my goals basically suggested I was either (a) trying to do too much or (b) not prioritizing family high enough. I do appreciate the comments, but neither are really applicable to me or my personal situation.
First, the whole point of doing this is to be really ambitious, to use a combination of some of the techniques in the “goal guru / time management” industry. And so I am not trying to do all of them. Maybe not even most of them. Really what I am doing is listing goals and creating the list so that I can use it to remind myself of my goals, to take a greater step than most in actually writing them down as well as to get them out of my head and on paper so I don’t have to try and just remember them. Anytime I want them, they’re there for easy review.
Second, suggesting someone prioritize family “higher” is an easy comment, but is actually quite simplistic in concept. No matter what anyone does for family, someone will always say “make them a priority”. Of course, they’re a priority. But I also don’t want to be the equivalent of the stereotype of a stressed out parent (usually portrayed as a mom) who only lives vicariously through their family, who loses their own identity or subsumes their own life under that that of their children. That might make a “green” personality happy in the short-term, but I’m a primary blue — I’m always going to want some of own analytical time, for instance. Just how I’m wired…and if others want to follow an unconscious script that tells them family is always the “right answer”, that’s their choice. But I know better. I love my family. But I’m useless to them if that’s all I bring to the table or expect them to be my whole life. So I need to make sure some of those other areas are going too. But family is also not a “to do” item, nor will I treat them as such.
How did I do in 2011? Well, let’s see. First and foremost, I am happy with the fact that my approach included a new colour wheel that resonates with me in terms of psychology, personality, etc. However, it wasn’t entirely successful and I have a slightly tweaked approach for 2012 that I’m going to try that thinks in terms of just the four colours (no sub categories), and “themes” + a storyline. Almost like “branding my year” in a way so I can tell myself the story better. More info on that in future posts.
Second, something that wasn’t really on the list is something that sucked time like nobody’s business. My family and I moved homes — not a great distance from where we were, but huge upgrades on quality of life in a bunch of areas. But it pretty much killed three to five months of the year, maybe a bit more.
So let’s see how I did on the various items I had in my posts from last February / March.
Getting organized
Being organized
Maintaining to do lists, etc. — worked well at start of year but by end of year, I was drifting a bit…have now converted over to using Evernote and it seems promising so far.
House
I was expecting to do a lot of work on the old house and we did — but different work, work designed to help it SELL! And we bought a new house requiring a lot less work. Lots of new stuff to be done, but starting to sort itself out.
Finances
Wanted to do better planning and we did, both with strategic financial planner, wills, etc. But still work to be done that should have already been done on moving investments around, better insurance coverage, etc.
Computers
Finished and started using website, reorganized some of the computer backups etc.
Garden
Wasn’t a priority, nothing happened
Cottage
Wasn’t a priority, nothing happened
Design a house
Wasn’t a priority, but buying the new place helped us articulate what we were really looking for in terms of rooms, layout, location, etc.
Relationships
Fatherhood
Mostly about father vs. husband vs. individual, I didn’t do as well as I would have liked on the “father/husband” front in terms of carrying my share of the load — Andrea still does most of the pre-bedtime prep stuff.
Husband
Plus we haven’t made the time for “spousal” time, and most of our conversations are still about Jacob…need more date nights. Still supporting Andrea’s educational efforts, which is good.
Individual
Not doing as much after Jacob goes to bed either, a little too much TV watching of late.
Family
Hardly saw my family last year, which is not what I hoped for.
Body and Soul
Physical
Massage time down, Prevacid steady, eyeglasses replaced, got new doctor, but need to find new dentist, I became a greater couch potato, developed blood pressure problems, didn’t get new orthotics, no golfing, didn’t compensate on charitable giving. Plus other new stuff showing up on the health risk front.
Astro Pontiac
Need to get more organized for supporting Stephan on this astronomy proposal.
Figure out spiritual beliefs
I don’t really know what I believe anymore, and should really figure this out a bit more.
Ethics
Created personal rules / principles but not really sure I’m living them.
Weight
No real change
Meditation
Did nothing
Martial Arts
Did nothing
Giving blood
Tried to get this organized in late December but coordinator screwed up donation date, need to rebook
Learning
Online courses
Did nothing
Personal interest courses
Did nothing
Further studies
Did nothing
Learning sign language
Did nothing
Use own telescope
Did nothing
Learn photography
Did nothing
Learn to drive a standard transmission
Did nothing
Social
MMMMM outings
Did nothing
Remembrance Day / Corn roast
Wiped out by moving
Coffee with Amanda / Hockey with Seb / Brunches
Pretty much a wash out.
Book reviews
28 all up and converted
Movie reviews
Did nothing
Ebook collection, pruning paper
Nothing
Billboard music
Nothing
Learn to knit
Nothing
Play Pai Gow
Nothing
Movie weekend
Nothing
List of top books
List compiled
Creativity
Business model for publishing
Lots of research, looking good
Writing
Blog only
Capital Crime
Nothing for new year
HR guide (employees)
Started posting
HR guide (employers)
Preliminary
Gods novel outline
Nothing
Cookbook
Nothing
Recipe nights
Nothing
Career
Mentoring, coaching
Some 1:1, some group
Focused content
Not really, still main stuff
Day job vs. SR / SORO
Caught up in SORO, not able to extricate myself
French
Nothing
Presentation
Continued learning series
Leadership
Teaching role
Continued learning series, some blogging on tech issues (SEO)
Municipal issues
Nothing
Local theatre
Nothing
Windmill to tilt at
Nothing really, some blogging
Travel – England
Nothing
Travel – Territories
Nothing
Travel – Grand Canyon
Nothing
Travel – Galapagos
Nothing
Travel – Ortona
Nothing
Travel – Iceland
Nothing
Travel – Scotland, Ireland
Nothing
Travel – Aust/NZ
Nothing
Travel – Fiji
Nothing
Travel – Egypt
Nothing
Travel – Antarctica
Nothing
Other (Miscellaneous)
Red Tie to web
Nothing
Garage sale
Nothing
Porch swing
Nothing, but moving reprioritized
Basketball hoop
Nothing, but moving reprioritized
Bicycle setup
Nothing, but moving reprioritized
Car insurance claim
Nothing
ETFs
Nothing, but moving pre-empted it
In the end, some progress, some slippage. My only real concern for the future is where there are whole categories essentially that I did nothing on, indicating that there is a sub-area that I am relatively ignoring. Part of that is the way I set my priorities, and some of it is the way I remind myself what to focus on. I think the new approach for 2012 (themes, storyline) will help counteract that…at least, I hope it will! Stay tuned!
