Friday 1 June 2018

Goals in June

Last Monday I made a decision that when I came home from the school run I would create a scrapbook page, then a blog post, then start my day.

Creating more layouts is something that I've been trying to figure out how to do for well over a year.

I've drawn up plans for ideal days, researched morning routines, drafted out daily schedules and pinned everything I read.


But I realised on Sunday that the one thing I hadn't done was start.

So I started.

Writing a blog post was also part of that plan.

I managed Monday and Tuesday, but when I sat down on Wednesday, I started overthinking.

And I didn't see that I was doing it until I had written 6 draft posts, and given up for the day around 3pm, and switched on Netflix.

Then on Thursday I was crazy busy attending a craft class with a friend and dealing with after school tantrums.

And today I'm trying to figure out how to fit a whole pile of baking for school into my day, and Steve is coming home, I don't think I got meat out of the freezer for dinner, and what about my blog post?

Then I read a blog post from Melissa at Suger Coat It and I breathed and remembered that I do know what I'm doing.

And I started.

June Goals

Blog every day. I mentioned in this post that I'd finally figured out how actions and goals and habits and projects and purpose all worked together to build the results that people want to achieve. And despite all the reading I have done over the years, it was a solution that I had to come to myself (kind of like how husbands never listen to wives the first time, but always come back to her common sense answer as if they'd figured it out themselves.)

So while on the surface it looks like I'm setting the same goal as every other blogger, really the purpose and motivation is deeper than that - blog every day => consistency => traffic => money => contribute to our overdue mortgage => take some weight off Steve.

The project that supports this goal is to create an editorial calender. Which feels kind of counter-intuitive to just letting go and writing, but I need to give myself a little bit of structure so I don't completely ramble for thirty days. I'm going to choose 15 journal prompts from the many I've pinned, and list them at the end of this post, that way I can ramble one day, and have a tight topic the next. Fingers crossed it works!

The habit that supports this goal is to bookend it with my scrapbooking layouts, and write after creating.

Scrapbook every day. I've read a few things over recent months about people having success increasing their productivity doing the fun things first, and it's an idea that has stuck in my head for months.

When you think about how we teach ourselves to be productive, it's often with an eat the frog mentality - do the bad thing first, then the good things can come afterwards. But in our busy days later often doesn't come, or we're too tired when it does, so we don't do the fun thing, instead opting to Netflix or mindlessly scroll.

So I'm doing the good things, the fun things that excite me before I get stuck into housework or content creation or image sourcing or any of the eleventy billion marketing tasks I'm failing dismally at.

Sort out the floordrobe, and keep it tidy all month. Clothes in piles on the spare bed is an endless source of frustration to me. I wear the same five tshirts and pants each week because I can't find anything else, and Sophie's clothes are deeply lost in the abyss. So this month I'm sorting everything out, putting away the stuff I'm keeping, throwing out the stuff I hate, and keeping it tidy.

I think if I can manage those 3 things, I'll have had a very productive June.
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3 comments

  1. Fab post! Sometimes I think we all spend too much time thinking about what we need/want to get done, that we don't actually get around to starting anything. Now I'm home all day I think I need to get the housework done better - I tend to leave it all until one day and then it's a huge chore, if I did a bit every day, it wouldn't seem so bad. As it is, we have friends coming over tonight for a takeaway meal and I have the whole downstairs to clean before they get here! At least it will look lovely for the next few days as well!

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  2. I too have been struggling with acting on my plans. Some days are better than others but then I get up & try again. Like your thoughts behind writing a post each day & having a plan that allows for what you feel like as well.

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  3. Just wanted to say that your idea about scrapbooking everyday stuck in my head. After our visitors left at the end of August & I got my craft room (which had been more an office than craft room) back I kept my computer set up on the other desk I'd moved to and have my scrapbook supplies permanently out on the desk in my craft room and have been doing a little bit of scrapbooking everyday. This is working well for now. Not sure what will happen when we renovate & the utility room where the computer desk currently is becomes a laundry. I'll figure out that when the time comes.

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