I hope your holidays were everything you wanted them to be.
Our family had a great holiday break. My daughter and I were done homeschooling for the year right after Thanksgiving, and we just started again this week. My husband started a new job the week of Thanksgiving, so he was unable to take any extended time away. My son is in college now, and had classes up until a few days before Christmas, plus he works at a local fast food joint. So, we didn’t travel this year, but stayed home and enjoyed the stillness we could carve out. We have one more holiday event coming up this weekend — My adult daughters are coming in at the end of this week. We have a family road trip planned!
As usual, I did a good bit of thinking about what I want 2020 to look like. My family and I talked about what we’d like to do this year, and our individual goals for the next 12 months. We have an exciting, and interesting year coming up. My youngest will graduate high school in May, and will start college in August. My son (the second youngest) is in college working on a business degree while he works at a local fast food joint. Both have been good for him. My husband is settling into a new job that allows him to work from home, and he’s loving it.
As for me, I have a lot more time now than I did even 3 months ago. With my husband’s new job comes a huge reduction in the amount of driving I have to. I was driving my husband to and from work every day. Two hours in the morning, and two hours in the afternoon, plus running kids around to work, band, and other various activities. For the past few weeks, I’ve been simply enjoying the change in routine.
With our last holiday/vacation activity coming up this weekend, it’s time for me to get back to work. With the drastic reduction in driving, along with reduced homeschooling time, (our daughter is currently finishing her very LAST high school class, and using her remaining time to start a small business to help pay for her college expenses) I have significantly more time to work, and write than I have in last …..15 years. (wow. that sounds like such a long time, and yet it went by so quickly) Right now I’m focused on figuring out what I want to DO with all this time. I still have some homeschooling to do, and neither of our 2 kids at home have drivers licenses yet, so I’m driving our son to work, and our daughter to band each day, but that’s a small part of my day.
It’s a weird thing to suddenly have your daily responsibilities cut by such a degree. I image this is probably similar to what it feels like to retire.
I have quite few work, health, and house goals for this year. And, the first part of meeting any goal is to make a solid, workable plan.
For my health goals:
- Finally lose those last 20 lbs.
- Do strength training at least three times a week. (body weight)
- Pay closer attention to the amount of oxalates I eat
- Finally kick my chocolate habit
- Maintain a steady daily step count of about 15,000 steps each day
- Use my couch less, and sit on the floor a lot more
Work goals:
- Finish at least three of the health books I have in various stages of completion
- Write and record at least one video health class
- Pick up a few more coaching clients
- Expand my coaching offerings to include homeschool/unschool coaching.
- Write here, on this blog, at least twice a week.
- Earn certification in NLP.
- Start and maintain a community for those interested in natural health and/or homeschooling.
- Work with my daughter to get her instrument repair business off the ground. We are looking to build a solid part-time business.
- Read at at least 6 books this year on business, health, coaching or writing.
I have a list of personal and financial goals as well, but I won’t share those here. You guys are more interested in how I handle my health and business goals.
One thing I’m doing differently this year, is I’m focusing and planning things in 12 week chunks. I’m reading The 12 Week Year by Brian P. Morgan and Michael Lennington. I’m only partway through the book, but so far I like the concept. The short version is that by breaking up your calendar year into shorter chunks you create a sense of urgency and importance to your work and your time. When you have “all year” to complete a task or a goal, you’re more likely to procrastinate than if you only have 12 weeks to complete that same task. Right now I’m in the process of breaking my health and goal lists down. Since my lists are kind of long, and varied, I’m choosing a couple from each list that I think I can complete, or make solid progress on in the next 12 weeks. They will get the majority of my attention.
For example, my health goals look something like this:
First 12 weeks —
- increase strength training to 3 times each week
- Sit on the floor whenever I’m on the computer
My work goals might look like this
- Post to msquill website 2 a week for the next 12 weeks.
- Choose one unfinished book, and finish the writing.
- Finish reading the 12 Week Year
- Decide on a topic for my first on-line class. Outline, develop learning materials, and make script notes.
I don’t know if the above will be my focus for the next 12 weeks or not. This idea of breaking the year into 12 week chunks is new to me, and I’m still feeling my way though… and I’m not done with the book yet.
