It’s that time of the month!! Not that time….but time to talk about small goals for the month. I think about small goals in two ways: the first way is to look at what my big, overarching goals are for the year and develop smaller steps towards meeting them each month. The second way is to look at habits I’m attempting to develop and tracking the progress (like flossing nightly or not going to bed with dishes in the sink every night)!!
Spending some time thinking about my goals for 2018, I discovered a couple of things that surprised me. I have a time management issue. I am finding that when I work on a big project I just plow in and work until I am worn out. The problem is that I am then burned out and don’t get back to the project and move on to something else. This is one of the reasons that my efforts to declutter have been so hit and miss.
The other thing I discovered is that I after I’ve decided on my goal, I often don’t break it down into reasonable chunks. We all know very well that in order to be successful in completing tasks, big goals or projects have to be broken down into much smaller steps.
The combination of these two issues has led to projects being started but never finished!! That is definitely NOT the goal.
Here are my small goals for JANUARY:
- De-clutter the dining room. There is an area in my dining room where stuff just ends up. This is mostly because I have either not returned things to their rightful place OR the things don’t have a place. In addition to this area, I plan to de-clutter my dining room hutch part of which has become a catchall especially for dishes that are special use or party supplies. Truth be told, I really don’t even know what I have in there. My plan is to set an appointment in my calendar and then a timer to work on the task. This will (1) remind me to start the task and (2) remind me that I don’t need to get it all done at one time.
- Empty kitchen sink (on work nights) waking to a clean kitchen when I have to go to work is wonderful. The clean kitchen is a positive experience first thing in the morning. Honestly, on mornings that I am not going to work, it really doesn’t matter to me.
- Self-care: Trying this again because I really want to improve this area of my life. My goal remains a weekly mask AND I am adding a monthly bath to the mix.
- Sleep:Another area that can fall into self-care but deserves it own space! Nothing gets better, habits don’t change for the better if I’m exhausted and can’t make good choices. I am a natural night owl and fight myself when it’s time to go to bed. Again, this is something I’m focusing on for work nights. My goal and plan is to be in bed by 11:00PM.
There are other areas that I want to work on but that’s enough for this month.
BONUS: I decided to add my word of the year to this post because it fits with all of my goals for this month and the year in general. I want to hold myself accountable as well as remind myself that I deserve to treat myself as well as I treat others.
When I make a commitment to someone else, I don’t break it. When I make a promise to another, I stick to it. So it that vein, I will make promises and commitments to myself. My word for 2018 is:
COMMIT. One of the definitions of the word is to “pledge or bind to a certain course or policy.” I could break it down to all of the areas that I want to commit to but the truth is I just want to commit to myself. To commit to being who I want to be and to deciding what I want and then doing it. I want to commit to myself the way that I commit to others.
Wish me luck and if you have any ideas or suggestions, let’s talk about it in the comments!!
