Time Management is Key

After thinking about the goals that I've set for myself this year, it seems that "time management" is key to getting all of these thinngs accomplished. Between my family, working full-time and taking three classes in college, time management will be the ONLY way that I will get anything else accomplished.

I googled "time management tips" and found a few tips:
1. Plan each day -- If you plan your day, it can help you to accomplish more in the day and can help you feel more in control when life sometimes seems out of control. Making a "to-do" list and prioritizing your tasks for the day can take a lot of the headache out of your day before it hits.

2. Say "no" to non-essential tasks. I'm especially guilty of this one. If someone asks me to do something, I have a really difficult time saying no. This is definitely one I'll have to work on. I get myself so overloaded with extra tasks sometimes, I don't know how I get anything done.

3. Delegate. My daughter won't be too happy about this one. I think that there needs to be some delegation of chores on an on-going basis. :)

4. Get plenty of sleep. This is a hard one for me lately. I can't seem to get to sleep at night. I need to set a time for myself to be in bed with no computer or book!!

5. Healthy diet and exercise. I'm a work-in-progress on this one. I made a new start today. I've chosen to do the Metabolic Research Center diet on my own and put my daughter in charge of the accountability department. She's going to review my food journal and I have to weigh-in in front of her twice a week. She's already on task and told me that she'd be asking me about my exercising too.

6. Take time for you. This is something that I need to make more productive. Lately, my "me" time has been playing Farmville. There are probably better uses of my time.

All in all, I think the goal of working on some time management skills doesn't seem undoable. It will just take some discipline on my part to get out of over-drive and make some conscious choices to make my life better.

Goals

So...I'm starting the year out with several goals. I'm not going to call them "resolutions" because that doesn't really seem to work out for too many people. By the end of January, most people seem to have abandoned their "resolutions" and have forgotten that they ever thought of such a thing.

So, my GOALS for this year are the following:

1. To write every day. However, "writing" might mean that I'm researching something on some days.

2. To finish the novel that I have started working on. I've had this book in my head for several eyars. This will be the year that I complete it. I started taking a "write your novel in a year" online workshop a few months ago and have the whole thing outlined -- including very thorough character development, etc.

3. To work on time management. I need to do something to become more efficient with my time. I've got so much going on all the time and I need to try to figure out a way to become a little more organized.

4. Lose weight. I have about 70 pounds to lose. Before Christmas, I had 60 pounds I wanted to lose. Darn it!! Unfortunately, during the holiday season, I gave myself permission to eat with utter abandon. I need to get myself back on track and get serious about this diet thing. So far this year -- on 1/11/11 -- I have not gotten serious AT ALL! I don't have any excuses other than my total lack of discipline and just not feeling like doing it. I'm toying around with three different diet plans -- Metabolic Research Center, Weight Watchers and South Beach. They all have their pros and cons. I just need to pick something and engage. I signed up to do a weight loss challenge that starts on the 22nd so my time for getting serious is now!

5. Run a 5k. This will entail my actually starting to exercise regularly. I decided t hat I will start off slowly by walking five days a week. (Since my exercise lately has included walking to work and back from the parking garage.) After a couple weeks of regularly exercising, I'm going to work into the "couch to 5k" exercise routine that I found online.

So far, of the five goals that I've listed above, the only one that I've seriously worked at is writing every day. I'm dedicated to getting the story done this year. Unfortunately, I'm getting hung up on the whole "showing versus telling" thing. I slip into "telling" without even realizing it. Part of the learning curve, I hear.

Why can't we all get along???

It's been an interesting day today. I left work with the thought, "Why do adults find it necessary to play games?" I have an acquaintance that seems to go out of her way to cause difficulty for other people. She's somewhat passive-aggressive so she never confronts people when she plays these games, she always goes behind their backs. I've watched her do this to people for several years. She's absolutely masterful. She slowly undermines until she gets her task completed. If someone calls her out on her games, she turns it into a situation where she acts as if the other person is being paranoid. Well, I fell victim to her agenda today.

It makes me wonder what makes a person feel that they need to act like this? Is it a control issue? Is it a self-esteem issue -- maybe these people feel that they need to knock other people down to feel better about themselves....OR are people that play these games just mean? Do they take pleasure in making life hard for others?

I guess the bottom line in my opinion is..........life is too short to play games. While it may be naive of me to ponder the thought........why can't we all just get along?

End of the Weekend

The three-day weekend is over. I had looked forward to it for a month. It was a pretty good weekend. My daughter came home from a ten-day mission trip, I got to see my wonderful grandson all three days of the weekend and had a little bit of down time.

It's funny that I look forward to the weekends and the down time they bring when, most of the time, the down time that I crave happens during the work week in the evenings. There's something nice about the routine and predictability of the work week that I definitely appreciate.

Hopefully this week will prove to be a good week with low levels of stress and frustration and high levels of happiness and peace.

Empty Nesting Over

My teenaged daughter comes home today after a ten-day mission trip. In anticipation of her being gone, I thought about how much reading and relaxing I would be able to get done. I had great intentions of getting into an exercise routine. How much have I read? Maybe 10 pages. How much relaxing have I done? Not much. Did I get into an exercise routine? Nope. What did I do? I have no idea. I've been busy the whole time she's been gone, but when I think back over the last nine days I couldn't tell you what I've been doing.

As I sit here this morning surfing the internet, it makes me wonder how much of my time I spend mindlessly looking at Facebook, checking email, looking at author blogs....the list goes on. Could I have spent the last nine days surfing the internet in my spare time? Surely not. I went to work. I've gone to puppy training class a couple times. I went to book club. I went to an author reading and signing. I went shopping with my daughter a couple times. I had dinner with my daughter, son-in-law and grandson one night. Life.

When it rains, it pours!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Trying to get to church this morning started last night. My grandson's first birthday party was last night and I had some ice cream and a little bit of his birthday cookie -- this probably wasn't the best idea since I've been on a diet for about seven weeks and have not really eaten anything too rich for that long. The gurgles started at the party but got really bad last night about ten o'clock. The gurgling in my digestive system was every bit as loud and volatile as the thunder storm that was rolling through outside. I wasn't able to sleep for more than about an hour at a time.

At eight o'clock this morning, I started trying to wake up my daughter. I got a grunt in response so I asked her if she was awake and got a droopy, "yeaaaaah." I tried to wake her up three more times, before I decided to go back to bed. I sent her a text message that said, "I'm not getting up until you do. I don't feel good and I didn't sleep well. Let me know when you're up." At 8:41, I finally get a text message from her saying, "I'm up." So.............I get up and jump in the shower.

The fighting ensues with my daughter. As I'm getting ready to go, my daughter comes out of her bedroom in a blue and white vertical striped button-up shirt and black, gray and white plaid shorts and tan shoes. I tell her to change her shirt. She gets mad and tells me it's fine. I tell her that she needs to change her shirt because the clothes don't even remotely match. She gets mad and turns around and slams her door.

She soon realizes we're not going to make it to Sunday School on time and she thinks it's my fault. I tell her that if she'd have gotten up when I tried to wake her up four times, this wouldn't be an issue. She and I continue to bicker and I'm turning my blow dryer off and on so that I can hear what she's saying. So....the smoke starts billowing out of my blow dryer. I unplug the blow dryer and the smoke thankfully immediately ceases. I look at myself in the mirror and see that my hair is still pasted to the sides of my face because it is that wet. I grab my brush, my makeup and go downstairs.

We finally get out of the house to drive the 10 miles across town to the church and we're making good time. We're going to make it on time. It's 9:21...we can do it. We're 18 blocks away. What happens??? Detour!! I couldn't believe it! The detour takes us a couple of miles out of the way! Arghhhhhh!!!!

Believe it or not, the story is actually even longer than this if I included all of the things that happened this morning, but.....we made it to Sunday School on time.

Puppies

Life with a puppy has proven to be very interesting! We brought our 1o-week-old Yorkie-poo, Bailey, home last week to the dismay of our two cats -- these cats both weigh a good 10-15 pounds if they're an ounce. One would think that since Bailey weighs all of 2.8 pounds, that she wouldn't completely terrorize these two cats....but she does! Bailey barely ever barks, she plays with her toys and sleeps and then she sleeps some more, but for some reason these two cats are completley intimidated by her. She is, indeed, the alpha dog of the house!! It will be interesting to see how this unfolds!!