r u l y

Goal-achievers in my garden!

This month we discussed various strategies to put goals into action.  I chose the words “execution strategy” to introduce my techniques but the gallows humor of these words is not lost on me.  It can feel like torture to do the work necessary to achieve your goals but ultimately we hope to get to a point where we don’t mind the work as much.  Perhaps we learn more about how to do something and it is easier or faster for us to do. Perhaps we commit the new action to routine and we just do it without thinking about it.  Perhaps we don’t find the task as awful when we know the great results it brings or perhaps something in our life changes for the better and we don’t need to do the dreaded task anymore.

Below are the 6 execution strategies we discussed this month:

1)      Get in the right mindset.  Examine your words and behavior to make sure they are supporting and not sabotaging your goal.

2)      Document your progress.  Use a calendar, online tool, or my free printable checklist.

3)      Restart.  If you are experiencing a perfectionist hang-up about how you have failed in the past at your stated goal, “fuhgettaboutit” and make the same goal again today.

4)      Practice.  To get better at anything, there is no getting around the fact that practice and repetition are necessary.  In our mental planning, aiming to practice more than necessary can be a great way to see faster changes.

5)      Surround Yourself with People Who Inspire You.  Look not only to those in your “real” life but on the Internet as well.

6)      Minimize Distractions.  If you are going to fit in time and energy to change your life with a new routine, you may just need to eliminate something else.  For me, it was too much Internet browsing.

Favorite comments:

There were many excellent comments this month and I enjoyed reading all of them!  One that was particularly humorous was this one from Lou.  On the “Restart” post, I used a screenshot of a blue screened Windows computer as the image at the top of the post.  Lou commented:

“. . . I thought the blue message at the top was for real and happening to my computer. Twice I shut down to see if it would go away. Then I finally scrolled down . . . . oh my, no wonder I’ll only ever own a go phone.”

I sincerely apologize for any confusion and hope it did not cause anyone else this problem!

I also received a great comment on a post I did on spring cleaning rituals.  Blogger Margaret Cook indicated she used it as reference for her spring cleaning ritual on her Victorian-themed blog, where she is attempting to live like it is 1865!

Ruly Ruth

Ruly Ruth continued the healthy eating series for the year by testing a healthy Crock-Pot stew for us.  We also learned a little about the health differences in meat choices.

Organizing in the News

We looked at an example of online organization by reviewing how the first-time ever online SuperBowl broadcast fared.

Republican Presidential  candidates Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum squared off this week in primaries in Michigan and Arizona.  The Washington Post had an interesting article about the organizational style differences of the candidates.

“When Mitt Romney arrived for a rally in this Detroit suburb, he needed a crew of roadies to unpack him. . . . The big pieces of Romney’s stagecraft are always impressive: the DJ, the American flag as tall as a house. But his campaign also does the little things. The folding chairs are tied together with zip ties, so you couldn’t unstraighten Romney’s rows if you tried. . . .The Romney people even brought their own doughnuts: 35 dozen of a Detroit favorite called paczki (“punch-kee”), in flavors including strawberry, rose-hip and prune. . . .

Santorum, by contrast, uses a modest campaign to espouse deeply grandiose ideas. . . Rick Santorum does not provide doughnuts. He does not provide music, either. Or flags. Or chairs. . . . [T]he candidate brought a sweater vest. Three of his children . . . And a banner that wouldn’t stay on the wall. . . . His premise is that only he — a man who lacks the logistical wherewithal to rustle up snacks — can manage to rebuild the nuclear family and save freedom itself.”

–David A. Fahrenthold, “Two Michigan rallies reveal Romney, Santorum flaws,” The Washington Post, February 25, 2012.

It will be interesting to see how organization figures into the political campaigns.  From the above two examples, there is a clearly a connection between an organized appearance and money.  In this particular matchup, more organization seemed to have an edge but it was also interesting that the votes were extremely close.  Would a small organizational (and expense) tweak like providing snacks have made the difference?

Today is leap day, a reminder that this year we get an “extra” day to achieve our goals.  Tomorrow we start a new month and a new theme.  Please check back then to see where we are headed in March.

P.S. An extra reminder to my Facebook fans that, as I mentioned in my “Minimize Distractions” post this month, I am going to make Facebook my vehicle for posting monthly summary updates only.  If you would prefer to receive more frequent updates as each post is made, please join my e-mail list or Twitter feed.

distracting the truth. Photo by may ishii. From the Flickr Creative Commons.

This strategy to aid in achieving your goals is in some ways the complete opposite of the prior post.  While sometimes we need to look for external motivators to help us stay focused, other times we need to strip all of that distraction away.  (This is one of those delicate “balance” items that is truthfully never balanced but rather in various states of imbalance all the time.)

In January as I sat down and created my resolutions/goals for the year, I realized that my organizing efforts needed to extend to decluttering my schedule.  As I pondered how to fit even more activities into an already full schedule, the only area I really had open to cutting was my goofing off time on the Internet.

This was going to be tough for me since I am a firm believer that downtime is necessary for the proper mental health functioning of a person.  We can’t be productive 100% of the time.  Sometimes you just need a well-deserved rest, or time to ponder things or just veg out and enjoy yourself.

Two of my particularly terrible vices are celebrity gossip and Facebook.  I wasn’t spending all that much time on Facebook itself but I found that often my brain would get wrapped around some trivial thing mentioned on Facebook and it would preoccupy me for hours, thinking about its implications.  It was becoming a huge distraction.

I told my husband I was going to restrict my Facebook time as well as my other recreational web browsing.  “Sounds great,” he said.  He then volunteered to aid in that effort by using technology to block various websites on our home network, opening them up for only one hour each day in the evening.  Before I could process how that would impact me, he had the blocking software up and running and the fix was in.

Naturally, there was a withdrawal period where I kept instinctively typing in the name of blocked sites.  I also had to use some self-discipline to not use my iPhone to get around the blocks.  Gradually, I found I was checking Facebook less and less.  Facebook also started to lose some of its appeal.  When Facebook time becomes scarce and you really look forward to checking it, it is an enormous disappointment when you finally log on only to find it is a slow “status” day and there is nothing much of interest.

I am nowhere near the prospect of recapturing all that recreational browsing time and transforming it into productive activities like cleaning and organizing but perhaps in time.  So far, I have begun to substitute other websites for the blocked sites.  My entertainment now comes from news websites.  The quality of writing is better and the content is more complex.  It was like switching from sugar to vegetables.   I still crave the sugar sometimes but it has also been interesting to see that once you are accustomed to more demanding content, celebrity gossip just isn’t as interesting (still interesting, mind you….just not to the same extent as before!).

As another example of my content dieting, I have so far resisted joining Pinterest.  I know that I would absolutely love Pinterest and I would probably get a ton of ideas from it.  Google Analytics tells me some of the projects from this blog have been “pinned” and are generating visitors to my site.  (Thank you, by the way, to anyone who has been doing this!)  But since every conversation I have with a Pinterest user always results in the other person saying, “I spend way too much time on Pinterest.” I knew that I could never join it.  A recent Washington Post column comparing it to “digital crack for women” is probably right on target for me.  I don’t begrudge anyone else who uses the service.  I just know I lack the self-discipline to use it wisely.

Some of Ruly’s Facebook fans may have felt the effects of my content diet. I stopped posting Facebook updates for each blog post since I never seemed to be posting when Facebook was accessible to me.  Curiously, however, this situation ended up solving a problem for me.  I have always wanted to offer an option for people reading my blog to just subscribe to the end-of-month summaries.  It was an easy decision to make Facebook this vehicle.   So, if you only want to receive the end-of-month summaries, becoming a Facebook subscriber is the route to go!  If you want individual posts, join the email list or Twitter feed.

My content dieting methods may not be popular or fun and I have to give them more time before I can definitively say whether they are helping me be more effective or not.  As of now, I can say that there are times my mind feels more “settled.”  I still get easily distracted and I still waste way too much time browsing the web but I do find myself focusing  a little better on mentally challenging tasks.

What distractions are pulling you away from the goals you want to achieve?  What have you given up to gain more time?  Please share in the comments.

When you get stuck trying to achieve your goals, it is a wonderful thing to reach out to a community of friends for help.

In the Internet age, sometimes those friends are real people whom you have met in person and know well and sometimes they are people that you have never met but you feel like you know because you read their blog, Twitter feed, Facebook page, etc. I hope for some of my readers I am that “friend” to you.

Surrounding yourself with people who inspire you is a terrific way to stay motivated. If you can’t find the people you are looking for in your “real” life, there is such an abundance of personalities on the Internet that there is absolutely no excuse for not having your own virtual salon of artists and visionaries in whatever field you are interested in. Honestly, if you haven’t found at least one personality on the Internet who continually inspires you, you haven’t looked hard enough.

This past weekend, I helped one of my older neighbors set up her very first computer and email account. Waves of nostalgia overtook me as I went over basic things like explaining that the Internet is full of spam and that you should never pay attention to anything about a person in trouble or a credit card transaction that comes to you by email; that using all caps is shouting, etc. I received a terrific e-mailed thank you from her . . . written all on the Re: line. I was so proud of her effort and so excited for all the things she was about to discover and all the people she would surely connect with. The Internet has truly changed the world.

Recently, the Internet came to my rescue with a baking project for my daughter’s preschool. I signed up to bring the sugar cookies for the Valentine’s party, perhaps forgetting my previous baking failures in this area. I remembered a great baking blog that I had run across and looked up sugar cookies. Sure enough, the author promised “I am a sugar cookie snob.” and then gave very detailed instructions about exactly how to make good sugar cookies.

Even with this expert guide at my side, coaching me through measuring the flour and refrigerating the dough, there were a few mistakes, like this first batch of overly-browned cookies.

The burned sugar cookie heart has to be up there with black roses as the ultimate Valentine’s revenge gift.

It took 3 batches to finally get the oven timing right but it really was a good sugar cookie in the end!

Sometimes we need a reminder that there are people out there right now achieving the dreams we want to achieve. Sometimes we need to see their struggle and failures and sacrifices as we admire their example.

Sometimes we just need a pat on the back from a real friend who has no intention of achieving the dreams we want but likes us anyway. Sometimes we need a reminder that people are rooting for us in the struggle, whether we achieve our goals or not.

My wish for everyone is that they have a strong support network to turn to, real, virtual or a blend of the two. It is probably the motivational tool that makes the most difference.

Who do you include in your inspirational network? Please share in the comments.

"practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice." Photo by woodleywonderworks. From the Flickr Creative Commons.

When you are trying to implement a new goal often you are really trying to implement a new routine in your life—something that you will eventually do by rote without really thinking much about it.  In order to get to that point, however, you will need to practice your new skills repeatedly.

One way to fast-track this process is to practice your goal skill more often than necessary.  I learned this last fall when I was exercising every day for 20 minutes.  Generally, most fitness experts don’t advise that you exercise every single day.  Rather you hear something more like 3-5 times per week as a recommended guideline.   But if you are trying to learn how to fit exercise into your life, forcing yourself to do it every day means that you are going to learn quickly how to exercise when you are tired; how to exercise when some life event has turned your world temporarily upside down; how to exercise when you don’t feel well; how to exercise when you are injured, etc.  You also gain the fitness benefit of making a rapid change to your endurance and muscle strength.

I found that when I made an everyday commitment, a routine began to fall into place.  When I backed off the everyday commitment, it became so much easier to say, “Well, I didn’t get to it today but that’s ok because I only have to do it 3 times a week and I can just do it tomorrow.”  That then backslides into a pattern of delaying and delaying until the goal doesn’t get done at all.

Another way to think about this strategy comes from a medical experience I had in law school.  As a stressed-out law student, I managed to give myself a silly Q-tip injury (Tip: never leave a Q-tip in your ear and then do something else like brush your hair.) that required some not so silly (but still minor) attention from an ear surgeon.  To prepare for the quick procedure to remove a scab from my eardrum, the surgeon prescribed ear drops to be administered 3 times a day.  Now, asking a law student to do anything other than study is just about impossible.  In between classes and exams and projects, it was hard to remember to use the ear drops at all.  When I went in for the procedure, the surgeon asked if I had been using the drops.  I confessed that it was not to the prescribed dose.

“Well, did you use them at least once a day?”

Yes.  I could say that I had.  “Well, that’s good enough,” he said.  “Sometimes, doctors prescribe a course of treatment more often than necessary to account for patient noncompliance.”

“Noncompliance” is the norm for most of us when we are taking on a challenging goal.  While it is harder for us to trick ourselves to do more than required to meet a minimum standard, sometimes we can make this strategy work.   Some ideas include:

1. Take your normal goal and cut it down into smaller tasks or chunks of time that convert it to an everyday goal.  (For example: the way I was exercising 20 minutes daily rather than one hour.)
2. Schedule your goal and announce your overly-ambitious goal publicly (to a group of friends, your family, your spouse or children, on your Facebook wall, your personal blog, etc.).  It’s like a “prescription” to yourself with others serving as the “doctor” monitoring your progress.

How do you institute difficult, new routines in your life?  Have you tried any of the above strategies? Please share in the comments.

"Blue Screen of Death." Photo by Taber Andrew Bain. From the Flickr Creative Commons.

The act of setting a goal triggers a perfectionist reflex in many people and particularly in successful people. If your goal is targeting an area of weakness, you may unrealistically assume that you can easily achieve the same stellar performance in your area of weakness as you do in your areas of strength if you just approach it in the same way.

Sadly, we often find that there is a good reason why it is an area of weakness for us and that perhaps part of the reason why it is an area of weakness is because the same strategies we are comfortable with and that lead us to success in other areas of our lives just don’t work for this particular problem.

So, when failure inevitably occurs, it is tempting for a perfectionist to assume:

1) “This must be a sign that I am a ‘bad’ person and that the way I do things in general is wrong.”
2) “This is something that I will never achieve.”

Both of these assumptions lead to general feelings of depression and often the perfectionist assumes that the way to feel better is just to forget about this depressing goal.

Remember that the perfectionist has an “all or nothing” mindset. Either everything goes perfectly 100% of the time or it is a complete failure. There is no middle ground, no baby steps, no milestones and no room for improvement.

If you find yourself falling into this trap, it may be helpful for you to think of “restarting” your goal process. In the restarting process, you re-energize yourself by applying selective amnesia to all that has come before. Forget about the fact that you had a prior goal. Forget that you failed to achieve it. Make the same goal today with new energy and try it again.

In many ways this technique is similar to rebooting a computer. You may have lost some data that you will have to painfully reenter but in the end you will probably end up with something better than what you started with.

Sometimes giving yourself this gift of forgetting is all that is necessary to shed all the negativity and doubt that holds you back and to go attack and achieve that goal with new energy. But often it’s not. For the best results, you need to restart but with a smarter or different goal than before.

For example, if your New Year’s Resolution was to exercise 3 times a week and as of today you have yet to exercise even once, give yourself a break and “restart.” Your mindset would be to stay, “As of February 15, my goal is to exercise once a week.” If, by the following week you still have not made your goal, “restart” again. “As of February 22, my goal is to exercise 20 minutes every Saturday by going for a brisk walk with my dog.” You can still work your way up to exercising 3 times a week but it may take you a while before you get there. Documenting your different goals and their results (like a human science experiment) will really help you to learn the boundaries of the mindset that will ultimately work for you.

Mental traps can be so detrimental to our achievement potential. Giving yourself a break and a fresh restart can be one simple and powerful way to refocus and a great coping technique if you find yourself adopting a perfectionist approach to your goals.

Do you struggle with perfectionism when it comes to achieving a difficult goal? What techniques work best for you to cope with failure or subpar results? Please share in the comments.

This month at Ruly we are looking at the vexing problem of how to get from a goal in theory to a goal in action. This is one of the most difficult challenges anyone faces in life and, unfortunately, there is no sure-fire, 100% guaranteed method. But fortunately, there are a lot of different ways to approach the problem and more than likely at least one of them will be helpful to you.

Today’s execution strategy is to document your progress. Now many of you may groan at the thought of not only having to achieve your difficult goal but also committing to the dreaded task of writing it all down. Whether you call it documentation, charting, accounting or journaling, recording your progress is a great way to:

1) refocus on the priority you are trying to achieve
2) streamline to a small, achievable goal
3) measure the effectiveness of different action plans.

How do you do this? Documenting your progress does not have to be complicated or require a lot of effort. It generally works best to do a quick daily check-in. I do mine at night before I head off to bed. I quickly write down notes about myself or my children. Anything that is really important to you should be tracked.

If you are just getting started with documentation, here are some ideas to think about:

Downsize. First, think of your original goal and where you are now in your achievement process. Are you closer to your goal, in the same place as before or even further away? If you have not made progress, perhaps your original goal is too vague, too broad or too ambitious. Could you try downsizing the goal to something easier? Don’t worry about the goal being “too easy.” For now, you want to concentrate on achievement. Once you demonstrate achievement, you can always increase the goal.

All or Nothing. Next, write the goal in such a way so that there is a daily progress requirement and an easy yes/no, black and white answer as to whether you made the progress you needed to make. For example: put away 20 things every day OR exercise 30 minutes every day OR floss my teeth at bedtime OR file 20 e-mails. Make sure that your goal has a simple “yes” or “no” or a one-number quantifiable answer. If you can’t answer your progress checkpoint in this way then the goal is still too vague or complex. Make it even simpler.

Measure. Implement a system to track your progress. At the end of each day, report to yourself. I find that it is easier to track a difficult goal on a separate calendar, checklist, journal, e-mail folder or other system. That way you are focusing on that one issue just by itself. If your goal has separate components, each of which you need to be doing, track each component separately. For example, you could have one checklist for “floss teeth,” one for “file 20 emails” and one for “exercise 30 minutes.”

• Download a free Ruly daily goal checklist here.

What would you add to this documentation strategy? What goal-tracking systems have worked for you? Please share in the comments.

I am not much of a football fan and generally only watch one game a year . . . the Super Bowl of course! Since we don’t own a TV at the moment, we generally rely on being invited to a Super Bowl party, watching it at a restaurant or just doing without.  We were thrilled to hear that the NFL was broadcasting the Super Bowl online for the first time.

Here are my observations on this interesting experiment in online organization.

I was busy with household chores and missed the kickoff and joined the broadcast about 45 minutes in. My biggest concern was whether the broadcast would have enough bandwidth to be watchable given the huge number of people who were likely watching online. There were a few hiccups in the transmission when I first joined but they resolved in less than a minute and there were very few glitches during the entire game.

The online version of the game promised that you could change the camera angle, backup and rewind the plays, etc. You could change the camera with a click of the mouse to 4 preset views (overhead, from the end zone, the coaching staff, etc.). The views showed up in the tiny secondary window not the main window.

Football rewards the visual-spatial thinker. When I view the standard overhead football camera view, I find the amount of visual input overwhelming and confusing. I am not sure where I am supposed to be looking. My favorite camera views are the ones where we see in slow-motion the view of one particular player. For example, watching the quarterback try to figure out who is open or watching the receiver make an incredible catch.

I never did try to rewind the game but you could share various clips of the game on Facebook or Twitter if you wanted to.

There was a Twitter conversation going on in the right window pane. The Twitter handle was “PFTon SNF” which had no meaning to me. (At the end of the game, they changed the handle to “ProFootballTalk” which was clearer.) There were regular fan questions being answered constantly and the commentary overall was intelligent and not overwhelming to someone who didn’t know about football.

When it was time for commercials, the online experience was a bit of a disappointment. For some reason, the commercials did not stream just the same as the game. Instead there was a loop of the same 4 commercials. Primarily it was actor Rainn Wilson asking us to click on him to watch ads for Chevrolet on YouTube, which was sort of odd. If you did click to watch them, you then had the Chevy ad playing at the same time as the broadcast. Between the noise of the two competing audio streams and the concern that you would have no idea when the game coverage would start back again, it was a disincentive to view any of the Chevy YouTube ads.

Then there were ads for the Samsung Galaxy phone, GE, Budweiser and the Act of Valor movie. When I first saw the Samsung commercials I couldn’t figure out why they were making fun of people in the Occupy movement. It was only after the 40th replay that I realized it was not supposed to be the Occupy movement but rather people waiting outside an Apple store for the next cell phone release! The GE ads were positive and inspiring.

Online viewers had the option to click to watch the “real” ads but it took me until the end of the game to figure out how to do this. Yes, there were a few ads linked prominently at the bottom of the screen but all the rest were hidden behind another tab of the screen. During the actual game, you didn’t want to risk missing the game to watch the commercials.

The biggest disappointment watching online, however, is that they did not stream Madonna’s halftime show! There was no explanation for why this was. Perhaps it was the music industry exacting its revenge for SOPA, perhaps it was technical challenges. During halftime, online viewers were treated to a discussion with football experts and an interview with the head of NBC sports. It was a thoughtful discussion and reasonably interesting. (I, for example, was interested to learn that the coaches for the two teams, Tom Coughlin and Bill Bellichick, are considered two of the most “buttoned-up” and “organized” coaches in the NFL.) It did not compare to Madonna’s performance, however, and I was sorry to have missed it. I was able to watch a grainy replay yesterday linked on the Huffington Post but I noticed today it was taken down due to a claim by “NFL Properties LLC.” Madonna was incredible and the performance looked flawless to me.

In the last quarter, I was absolutely riveted to the screen. What an incredible game! I don’t recall ever being on the edge of my seat for a Super Bowl game and this one went right down to the very last seconds. Amazing! This is still not enough to make me a football fan but I certainly look forward to next year’s Super Bowl and hope that they will stream it online as well.

Bottom line, how did the online Super Bowl do? I would give them grades in the following areas:

Football coverage: A (I can’t imagine what more a football fan would want.)

Ads: C (You could watch them but it was inconvenient.)

Halftime show: F (Madonna gets an A+ but the F is for not being able to watch it online.)

Anyone else watch the Super Bowl online? What were your favorite ads or moments of the game? My daughters loved the Coke polar bear commercials and any commercial featuring kids (like the Doritos baby sling one). I think Honda’s Matthew Broderick commercial and Kia’s “Sandman” commercial were the standout favorites, although both were better in their extended versions available online before the game.

Ruly Ruth's Road test of The Skinny Crockpot's Skinny Turkey Stew, Texas Style

If you are following a health or weight loss New Year’s resolution, you might have tried a healthy meal for your Super Bowl watching.  Ruly Ruth road-tested a healthy chili from The Skinny Crockpot.  Read on for her review.

Okay, so we are working on assessing the tastiness of easy to make and healthy meals. I made Skinny Turkey Stew, Texas Style in a crockpot.  Although that’s a tad bit deceiving–the first part calls for sauteeing the garlic, onion and celery. And I used ground turkey so I browned that as well…as well as ground turkey browns that is! I used about 1 cup of Baby carrots to substitute for the 2 carrots in the recipe–I try to use produce that we will eat more of regularly. (Did you know that baby carrots are not really baby carrots but irregularly shaped carrots cut down? Just a tidbit!) And I was out of allspice, but since nutmeg is a main ingredient in allspice, I substituted the 1/8 tsp. for that instead. Nutmeg is a lovely spice to add to all ground meats, fyi!

The chili actually cooked in about 6 hours–but I have a HUGE crockpot that is a long oval–if you have the smaller more circular one I’d say you’ll need all 8 hours–less surface area to heat the food at one time.

So what’s the result? Okay–the taste is good. I followed the spices as recommended. It’s spicy! Now with a lot of Mexican dishes, you often add cheese to help cut the heat. And in Italian dishes with your beautiful marinaras, again–cheese! And with chilis–you could definitely add cheese to enjoy this–or sour cream. We actually used an avocado in the serving dish to add that creamy texture and cut the spice a bit–and added tortilla chips to make it a more hearty, almost a tortilla soup chili. It was very good—I don’t LOVE LOVE it–so I won’t keep this recipe and in general there are a lot of pretty healthy broth-based soups that we really enjoy that I’d make more often. But it’s always fun to try something new! So for a low-fat chili, go for it! With a good kick, that is!

Slow Cooker Stuffed Pepper Soup

Coincidentally, we also made a turkey-based Crockpot meal for the Super Bowl based on a recipe that came in the coupon circular for our local Giant grocery store.  I am trying to find a link to it but it doesn’t seem to be on their website.  The  recipe is called “Slow Cooker Stuffed Pepper Soup.”  While it is similar to recipes of the same name posted online, it uses ground turkey instead of ground beef and the seasoning is a bit different. It was delicious!  It tasted very similar to the stuffed peppers my Yiayia used to make and was really easy and hearty.

This was a great circular that included coupons and a list of tips about how to eat healthy on a budget that were really clever.  If I find a link, I will update this page.

For our nutritional education this month, I pose the question, “Which is ‘better,’ ground turkey or ground beef and why?”

We will use the nutritional information supplied by the beef industry and a poultry producer. (Note: I had to scale up the beef facts by multiplying them by 1.333 in order to compare similar portion sizes.)

When you see the ground beef and the ground turkey stacked up side-by-side, the results are interesting.  In my own non-medical, personal opinion, it seems to me that you can probably choose which protein you prefer without suffering any life-changing medical harm.  You can save on calories, fat and cholesterol with the turkey, particularly if you go for the ultra-lean 99% option.  On the other hand, you pick up iron and several other nutrients, including zinc, thiamin, B6 and B12 if you opt for beef and it doesn’t cost you that much more in calories or fat.

The beef industry is fighting back against any black eyes it may have in terms of nutritional value.  I was surprised to learn the following:

“Calorie-for-calorie, beef is one of the most naturally nutrient-rich foods. According to research published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, beef is the number one source of protein, zinc, and vitamin B12; the number two source of selenium; the number three source of iron, vitamin B6, phosphorus, niacin and potassium; and the number four source of riboflavin.”

“Red meat’s fat profile is often misunderstood and a common misperception is that animal proteins provide only saturated fat. Surprisingly, half the fat in beef is monounsaturated, the same type of heart-healthy fat found in salmon and olive oil. In addition, one-third of the saturated fat in beef is stearic acid, which studies have shown has a neutral or cholesterol-lowering effect.”

“A 3-ounce serving of lean beef offers the most protein with the fewest calories when compared to plant proteins such as peanut butter, black beans and tofu.”

“A person would need to consume two to three times the calories provided in a 3-ounce serving of beef to get an equivalent amount of protein from a veggie burger.”

Source: “Proteins are not created equal,” beefnutrition.org

You can create a healthy diet in an infinite number of ways.  If you want to include beef in that diet, there are good reasons to do so but you will need to be smart about your choices.  If you are focused solely on calories, however, swapping turkey for beef makes a lot of sense.  And, of course there are those who opt for vegetarian or vegan options that work too.

Anyone else testing out turkey recipes?  Have any turkey cooking tips?  Please share in the comments.

More signs of change in our garden. Peony buds.

It’s a new month and a new organizing theme here at Ruly. My random Internet searchings last month brought me to a Wikipedia article on the history of the development of the modern day calendar. With great interest, I learned that the month of February is named after the festival of Februa (later named Lupercalia) which was all about purification and purging. Wikipedia describes the purpose of these festivals as “to avert evil spirits and purify the city, releasing health and fertility.” Now it would have been Ruly if the festivals were all about storage systems and cleaning house but the real festival was about animal sacrifice and naked men running through the city in animal skins striking people with thongs for good luck. More interesting certainly but how all of that related to purifying the city and releasing health and fertility is not exactly clear to me!  With that historical tangent aside, we press on in our organizing efforts.

Last month, we discussed goals and if you have been reading along, you should have your list of 2012 goals. You may have even started in on these goals. You may have even started and then neglected these goals. How do we transform these vague goals into measurable actions? In short, as Toby Keith put it, we need “a little less talk and a lot more action.” This month’s theme will address various ideas to help you execute your goals.

How are my own goals coming along? As you may recall, my theme word for the year is energy. I have had some success with my individual goals but one noticeable failure. For the past several days, I have complained to my husband:

“I’m so tired.”

Now, while it may be true and even expected of a busy mother of three/blogger/homeschooling teacher, what kind of “energetic” person goes around saying, “I’m so tired.” No one. What good is this phrase doing? Not much.

There are only three possible responses to this statement:

1. “You poor thing.” (or its cousins “Sorry to hear that.” and “I’ll bet.”)
2. “Join the club.”
3. “Why don’t you lie down and take a nap?” (my husband’s practical suggestion)

I realized that none of these responses is what I want. With regard to the first response, I am not seeking pity from anyone. I don’t think my life is harder than anyone else’s and in many respects, I have an easy and enjoyable life. With regard to the second response, I am doing nothing to energize people around me by saying this. All I am doing is reminding everyone of the obvious and the negative and who looks forward to hanging out with a “tired” person? What parent isn’t tired? With regard to the third response, I am not primarily physically tired but mentally tired.

So why I am going around saying “I’m so tired.” if it is doing nothing for me and is likely putting me in an un-energized state of mind? After some thinking and observation about when I am saying this and what circumstances make me say this, I realized it tends to happen the most when what I really mean to say is, “I am dreading doing ______ that I need to do right now.” Now if I said what I really meant, perhaps the people around me could respond with helpful suggestions about how they overcome that situation, which is far more beneficial than just dragging everyone down with “I’m so tired.”

So, while I can’t promise I will never say, “I’m so tired.” again, I am going to start saying instead:

“I am trying to summon the energy to _______________.”

There are many simple language and behavior changes like this that would make a huge difference in our lives but we don’t realize that we need to do them unless we are focusing some attention inwardly. Today’s execution tip is about those small changes.

Ruly Challenge: Is your choice of words or behavior sabotaging progress toward your goals? Pay attention to the moments when you have the opportunity to make progress toward your goals and you choose not to. What are you saying to yourself or those around you at those moments? How are you behaving? Could you make a small change that might encourage others around you to offer help and support?

Have you had any success turning a negative behavior into a positive one? Please share in the comments.

Spring getting a little aggressive with its 2012 goals. . . daffodils in January?

This month at Ruly, we revisited the topic of goals, looking at various perspectives on crafting effective goals. Below is a quick recap of this month’s posts, reader comments and organizing news.

• Goal Discovery Questions – when you aren’t sure where to start with the goaling process, some questions to ask yourself to generate ideas.
• Think Big and Think Small – asking “How” and “Why” to clarify an idea into a goal and subgoals

Lou commented:

When writing the one area of my life that I want to improve, I thought I was being altruistic, but the WHY and HOW questions made me realize it really is all about me! And that’s ok. The goal will help others while helping me.

• People-Based Goaling – the first reality check once you have developed a goal. Do you know anyone who embodies your goal?
• The Every Single Day Test – the second reality check for your goals inspired by a recent article on weight loss in The New York Times. If you had to do something you are not that interested in doing every . . . single . . . day to achieve your stated goal, are you still willing to commit to it?

Ruth commented:

I totally needed this article! I always want my old exercise and diet routine which is not possible with a toddler and being home full time. Time to get back to goal setting and finding compromise so I can work toward that goal again.

• Marcia Francois’ Goaling Tips – Streamling your goals into one theme word for the year to keep yourself focused and frame your goals (excuses, inspirations, etc.) to keep you motivated.  There were many great goaling theme words shared in the comments.
• The $10,000 Question – Using a time-tested mantra of the corporate world, how could you phrase your goals to practically guarantee you will achieve them? How would you state your goals this year if you had to pay a $10,000 penalty for each one you didn’t achieve?
• The De Kooning Perspective – If sticking to a goal is making you angry because you feel forced to adapt to someone else’s standard, check out this post for the insight reader Mary called “trippy” from artist Willem De Kooning.
• The Met Perspective – how a page-a-day calendar is keeping us focused on our goals.
• Ruly Hot Salad – If one of your goals this year is to improve your diet, I shared instructions for a super-easy winter salad.

This month has been a fascinating month for an observer of the world’s organizing systems. Just a few of the things that caught my eye this month:

Additional thoughts on goals:

• The ever-insightful Stever Robbins wrote a great blog post on “Your Life is a Community” about how you need to balance out goals in one area of your life with all of the other demands on your time.
• The University of Southern California School of Social Work sent along an interesting infographic about goals. What I found most fascinating was the first statistic about how the number of people that make goals drops by half once people reach the age of 45!

Examples of Extreme Organization

• SOPA – The amount of organization exhibited by those who challenged the SOPA legislation was awe-inspiring. The website blackouts had a profound effect and the reverse robocalls were clever and had a significant impact. In a perfect world, it would have been nice to see this attention morph into a broader discussion about what we (and the music and movie industry) can do to protect rights holders in an appropriate way but wow! What an effort!
• The State of the Union – Kudos to the White House for using technology to enhance the state of the Union speech with graphs and additional data and for using social media to start a discussion on these ideas! A clever way to lead by example.

Two fashion trends:

• Ombre Lips – FabFitFun posted a super-simple tutorial on the latest way to wear lip color
• The State of the Union provided some great tie-watching. If you struggle to pick good ties (as I do), you could try these lookalikes to the State of the Union ties.

Bruno Piattelli Mens Navy Gold Striped Designer Silk Neck Tie at amazon.com. (similar to Vice President Biden's choice)

Luzzario & Co Burgundy Dot Necktie at amazon.com. (similar to President Obama's choice)

Big Shot Neckwear 100% Silk Woven Striped Extra Extra Long 67" Tie at amazon.com. (similar to House Speaker Boehner's choice)

There is still more that could be said on the subject of goals but we will pause here for now and move on to a new organizing topic. Before we move on, however,

Ruly Challenge: Make sure your 2012 goals are written down and that you have at least one goal that you are fairly certain to achieve.