Happy New Year!
Yes, I know that January is just about over and that any resolution you may have set for yourself is probably long forgotten. In fact, according to research by the Franklin Covey Company, 33% of people will give up on their resolutions by this time. By the end of March, 75% will have given up. They must know me!
This year though, being the start of a new decade (and me loving numbers like I do) I decided to do something different. Hubby and I set off for a few days to have some fun and do some “serious” planning for this year. We talked about the good, the bad and the ugly of 2009 and our hopes and dreams for 2010. We used Jack Canfield’s Success Principles book as a guide and used his seven categories to define the areas of our lives. They are: work/career, finances, recreation/free time, health and fitness, relationships, personal goals and contribution to society. We then came up with a (S.M.A.R.T.) goal for each and then listed some “to do’s” under each. When projects like redo the dining room and clean out the basement started showing up on the personal list we decided to add an eighth category called physical environment. That took my “organizing projects” and hubby’s fix it projects off the personal list and into its own category (whew!).
The whole thing was a bit overwhelming so we decided we would think ahead only one quarter – just January, February and March. We took a yearlong calendar and added in the Big Rocks (commitments, vacation, holidays, etc.) first so we could see what time was actually left. (Don’t tell anyone but I have a SLIGHT tendency to overbook myself J.) Then we went month by month for the first three even getting down to the nitty gritty tasks we want to do and making sure they were balanced with non “work” type activities.
This was such a learning experience for us and we are already moving ahead because we are both on the same page. I’ll be sharing more in future blogs. Stay tuned by using the RSS feed button on the right sidebar and be automatically notified of new blog posts.
Thanks for reading!