What a cute Yoda!

And the Word is...

I spend a considerable amount of time at the beginning of each year deciding on my personal goals. The goals, themselves, seem to evolve each year as I get old wiser and more mature. I remember picking "Get Organized" one year and realize now how impossible it was to reach. I still dream of the day I will "Get Organized" but my ambitions are a little more realistic.


I've noticed the trend in the blogging world is to have a 'word of the year'. I'm not trendy but the thought of a word for the year has trickled through my mind since I was first introduced to the idea. I consider determination, strength, bravery, peaceful, none seemed right. I Run for Life, the song by Melissa Etheridge, started playing during my run today and I listened to the words, really listened. The chorus goes:

I run for hope
I run to feel
I run for the truth
For all that is real
I run for your mother your sister your wife
I run for you and me my friend:| I run for life

I frequently chose the Susan G. Komen Organization in my Charity Miles app and I proudly run in their events. Hope, Truth, Life, To Feel... yes positive words. As I ran, I thought about the list of goals I had set for myself, 14 for 2014, and the same theme flows through the entire list. Positivity. My word for the year is Positivity.

I want to be more positive with and towards people, I want to make positive changes in my life and in others lives. I want to make the most of each day, enjoying each moment.

Home Binder

This week I am only working one night due to a change in scheduling (yelling yippee quietly so my boss doesn't hear me) and so I can actually have a fairly normal, normal for me, schedule. I wanted to clarify some things about my planner; a discussion with my daughter made me realize that some things should not be assumed!

As I have previously said, I use a calendar for appointments, scheduled tasks, errands (vet visits, etc) and my work schedule. Anything else that has a specific time and/or day goes in the calendar. I use the weekly pages to list tasks from my running master list that I think I can accomplish, errands, I will jot notes, list the steps I want to complete in my ongoing projects, etc.

I use my planner for planning, my business plans, my master lists, my blog ideas, etc as we discussed in the previous post. I know people who list their household chores, which room to clean on which day, what closet to organize, when to do laundry. When I was a young mom, I did that too. Now I clean when its dirty, launder when I need clothes, I no longer need those lists! HA! Something to be said for getting old, haha. I don't want to clog up my planner with that kind of stuff nor do I want to carry around my meal plans for the week, nor do I want to carry around the passwords for everything! If I'm going to call the vet, I do it from home, no need to carry extra stuff in my planner. (I will jot the need to call and then the date of an appt in my super duper planner though!) So where do all those home things go?

My Home Binder!

The binder lives in a kitchen cabinet with the binder of recipes I use on a very regular basis, especially the ones from Pinterest that are a hit!

 

I do my menu plans in the binder, I have 6 pages of plans so if I'm not feeling creative (which is more often than not), I can pull a prior plan!

The binder has pocket pages, one of which I stuff file the recipes I need for the week.

 



I also keep a business card page that I keep all my certification cards (I loved the look of pleasure when I handed the whole page over to the HR person when I got hired at my job here. No scrambling and digging through a wallet for this chick!). I have a list of passwords and user names for important web sites. These are for not only me and my memory problems but for whomever might need them for whatever reason and my daughter knows where the list is!

A new year, new goals, new ideas

I am full of excitement for the new year even if I barely crawled to the end of last year. 2013 was filled with exciting changes, wonderful accomplishments, and as per the norm, some difficult times! I am facing 2014 with new ideas, new plans in place, and high hopes that I am more organized, more productive, and more in line with what I want and need in my life.

First a confession, I almost didn't have Christmas. The day would have arrived and my children, husband, and grandchildren would have found nothing, nada, zilch under the tree. I failed to plan and you know that cliche, when you fail to plan, plan on failing. I somehow let Christmas sneak up on me and when Thanksgiving rolled around I couldn't believe it! I sat down with the calendar and realized that between work (two jobs),  flights, and sleep I had a total of three whole days to prepare for Christmas.  I made a master to do list, vowed to not waste a single second, and hubby and I got busy tackling the master plan I plotted out. We rocked it! We shopped, we crafted, we wrapped, we stuffed stockings, we sewed, we routered, we packed, and we shipped. Every package was delivered safely to the doors of our children and their families not only on time, but early! We got our outside orders done and shipped, we had Christmas for each other. And after that panic, I vowed never again!

I am a list maker, a planner but I am also terrible at time management and another confession, I have trouble following through with the best laid plans! I start each year with a goal to be better organized and a new planner and by April...well, the same thing every year.  Planners seem to be designed with a cookie cutter person in mind. The mother of young children, the 9-5'er, the office worker, the soccer mom. I am none of the above. I don't work a regular schedule, I have an outside business, I also am writing a novel (or two or seven), I am a blogger, and I am a runner. I don't need a calendar, I love the one I have, but it doesn't work as a planner for me.

I use my calendar as, umm, a calendar and it works! HA!

 

 And the this entered my life. Its the ARC system that I bought at Staples. I have finally found a planner that will work for me because it was designed by me for MY lifestyle.

 

 

The planner is totally customizable and I can make it fit me instead of a cookie cutter person! As you can see, I have divider tabs that I created and some other tabs within some sections.



 Sorry for the side ways pictures, I'm not sure why they don't post like they are saved! Anyway, back to my super duper planner. I have a clear pocket that holds some tabs and my favorite pen. I also have a set of post its that clip right onto the discs.

The first page is my dashboard. A place to brain dump, jot a quick note to myself. I like it, not everything fits in a section so it goes here. If I find something consistently gets placed on this page, I'll add a divider, this can so grow with me and I can tweak it as I need to!

The master to do list. It's a running list, I cross off and high light as I complete something and it makes the undone more visible to me. As I review my plan for the upcoming week, I can move tasks to my weekly section as I see fit. I have monthly section, a calendar just so I know when I work or have plans so I can plot my business tasks or training around work.







I made a list of 14 goals for the year. All very general in nature because I will have a more step oriented page for each goal as needed. This next picture is a list of races I want to do in the next few months and a current list will allow me to register when the cost is lowest and to schedule my work without problems.

Then we have my blog section, one section, two tabs. One for this blog, one for my running/health blog.

I'm excited to have a plan in place for the year. I will update as I go along. What works, what doesn't. I feel confident my new super duper planner will help me achieve the goals I set forth for myself this year!