Tag: progress

Posted on

Goals and Aspirations for 2024

At the end of each month for the past decade plus a few years, I’ve reviewed my yearly goals and spent time reflecting on how I’m living the life I want to live ~ a way of becoming my own accountability partner and having frequent check-ins to evaluate my progress. The process I’ve been using has been helpful in guiding steps of intentionality and observable differences – – it has put teeth of quantifiable measure in the conversations I have with myself whenever I might attempt to believe that I’m making progress and provided a way to articulate exact progress so that I’m not merely shuffling things back and forth and deceiving myself. I make a table, establish goals, and keep an accountability log of accomplishments and action steps through month-end reflections. I learned this system somewhere in my early years of teaching and it was reinforced by my doctoral chair, Dr. Rachel Pienta, who assured me that it would get me to the diploma at the finish line with fewer tears and less frustration. 

She was absolutely right.

This year, though, I’m tweaking my process by a few degrees to get to the things in life I need to accomplish. Everything on my list is not an ongoing action goal – – some of these are aspirations, and I need to recognize the differences and prioritize my efforts. Weight loss is an action goal that needs quantifiable progress markers with a timeline. Downsizing and retirement planning needs quantifiable progress markers with a less strict timeline. But gardening and hobbies like knitting or quilting or canning fig preserves are not as high on the list of priorities, and they’ll fit in between the more challenging goals where time permits.

So this year, I’m using a different system. I’m evaluating my progress in bold areas monthly, and all other areas quarterly. 

I’m looking through a proverbial viewfinder for the big areas of life where I need the presence of some focal lenses, and I’m thinking of the smaller aspects of those larger lenses as I adjust the diopter lens and take snapshots of my journey. 

2024 underway, taking us on a new scenic journey. The conductor punched our tickets at midnight – – (and where we live in rural Georgia, our front door literally shook with a sonic boom from someone’s Tannerite explosion welcoming the new year). 

It’s here, folks! Welcome 2024, and cheers to you and yours!

The Viewfinder

Optical Lenses of FocusDiopter Lenses of Possibility     Snapshots of Success
Hobbies
and
Life Outside Work		Sewing, Knitting, Quilting
Traveling and camping
Gardening
Birdwatching
Monthly reading group with Sarah J. Donovan
Writing with Ethicalela.com
   5 times a month, and every day in April
Writing with Two Writing Teachers at the Slice of Life
    Blog every Tuesday and every day in March
Writing with Spiritual Journey Blogging group on 
   Thursdays
The Stafford Challenge – a poem every day starting     mid-January
Writing group book proposals

These columns will be shared as progress occurs each month or quarter.

For starters, I am sharing my blog post on Slice of Life today. And just like that, I’ve taken a step into 2024 with a hobby that I enjoy. 

Career and Work LifeFinancial Strategies
Retirement Plans
Downsizing home, possessions
Continuing Education
Networking
Spiritual LifeChurch Life
Prayer Life (OLW)
Family LifeWeekly Dinners and game nights
In Person Visits
FaceTime Visits
Group Texts
Traveling together
Celebrate Red Letter Days
Mental and Physical HealthReach top of weight range (I know this number) by June 1 and maintain it throughout 2024

Walking

Hiking campsite trails

My Table of Plans for Focusing on Success

My One Little Word for 2024 is pray. Today’s diopter word is step. As I pray for 2024 to be a productive and fulfilling year, I must step into it with purpose, and take the steps necessary – to do my part – to make it a great year. 

Posted on

Lightening the Load: My Self-Improvement Goals for 2023

"According to current research, in the determination of a person's level of happiness, genetics accounts for about 50 percent; life circumstances, such as age, gender, ethnicity, marital status, income, health, occupation, and religious affiliation, account for about 10 to 20 percent; and the remainder is a product of how a person thinks and acts." - Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

One of my favorite books over the past decade is Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project. I return to it often, examining all the ways to increase happiness by fine-tuning various aspects of life. This is the broadest category of focus for me this year, and I believe that if each one of my focused goal categories were its own nesting box, this one would be the one that holds all of the others. It involves diet, exercise, organizing, cleaning up, cleaning out, practicing frugality, investing time in relationships, counting blessings, professional development, reading, adjusting attitudes, and a myriad of other improvement areas.

On January 1, I mentioned a system for keeping goals that has worked for me since 2013. That system is rooted in this quote from The Happiness Project: “People are more likely to make progress on goals that are broken into concrete, measurable actions, with some kind of structured accountability and positive reinforcement.” That year that I first read this book, I established goals and wrote ten of them in the NOTES section on my phone. Every few weeks, I returned to each goal and added notes about my progress underneath the goal.

I’ll share a segment of my 2013 goals when I write about my Reflection goals this coming Saturday, but this system of establishing goals and accountability has proven successful in motivating my progress in reaching goals. This year, I’ll use the last day of each month to reflect on my goals and my One Little Word for 2023: pray. One strategy as a setup for success: I’ve already scheduled the end-of-month blog dates so that I can visit the post weekly to add goal updates prior to the last day.

A few specific goals in the Self-Improvement category include continuing my weight loss journey that began on Tuesday, August 9 with Optavia. Although the week of Christmas has included a period of grace for some indulgences, I am 48 pounds lighter than I was when I began, and less than 10 pounds from the top of my goal weight range. I will reach my weight goal around the beginning of February and will begin maintenance. I will continue to give away clothes that begin looking frumpy so that I minimize the opportunities for “personal re-growth.”

At the risk of today’s post becoming too lengthy, I’ll delay sharing any more specific goals in this category and will share these on regular blog posts throughout the year. I often add shorter goals in this category, and they’re met quickly. For example, instead of setting the goal as “conduct spring cleaning,” I may claim an unforeseen snow day as a day to “clean out the upstairs closets.” Smaller steps, sometimes spontaneous, seriously sizzling = SUCCESS!

Cheers to the betterment of all of us throughout 2023!