r u l y

Ready or not . . . here spring comes!

Wow! The end of February has come altogether too quickly. Here we are 4 days into March!

February ended up being a bit of a blur for me.

We finished up our ski lessons.

• Ski lesson recap

and prepared to celebrate Valentine’s Day

• Ski Valentines
• Valentines with an Organizational Twist
• Valentine Moments

There were many ways to spend time screen-gazing this month. I reviewed three major online events:

• Watching SuperBowl XLVII online
• Live Streaming from Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week
• Organization of the State of the Union Address

We looked at the fitness routines of the ultra-skinny

• The Model as Athlete

and checked out the athletic prowess of The Washington Ballet

• Ballet and Orchids

I began my own fitness routine

• Lenten Project: Yoga with Diamond Dallas Paige

and gave an update on how I am doing after one week on my new regimen.

• Fitness Routine Progress at Just Over One Week

If all of this activity caused anyone anxiety, Guest Blogger Ryan Rivera shared his insight, particularly anxiety in women.

• Guest Blogger Ryan Rivera: When Anxiety Attacks: A Look at Anxiety in Women

Honestly, I fell off my routine-tracking about mid-month and have been struggling to getting back to it.

March is going to be hugely busy for me. The weather is starting to turn spring-like and that means three things for me:

1) Gardening
2) Spring cleaning
3) Tax preparation

All of this comes on top of what I am already doing so I have to find a way to work that into my routine. Even though my first reaction is to throw my hands up, scream, “That’s impossible!” and forget about it all, I know that if I can stay focused and disciplined and work really hard this month, I will be in excellent shape for the rest of spring and summer. So I tell myself that all this craziness is only for 30 days, that I will get through it and my reward is to celebrate Easter at the end of the month with my family, in a gorgeously clean and organized house, (hopefully) with a trim body and a yard that is at least progressing in the right direction.

It’s going to be a LOT of work this month but I am trying to build myself up and stay positive that it can be done. The change in seasons is really giving me a lift. I love seeing all that sunshine! Of course, life will happen too and I will adjust as needed but for now I am starting off with guns blazing.

This past weekend, I began a deep spring cleaning on the main floor of my home. It took forever but now we are enjoying the progress we have made. It seems less intimidating now to work on maintaining the organization we have just achieved. Sometimes you can organize a little at a time but what a boost it gives you to do it all in one big swoop!

However, while I was focusing on the spring cleaning, I fell off on my other goals. So, you can’t have it all!

Here is a blank goals/routine checklist for March if you need a reminder to get yourself back on track.

• March 2013 Daily Routines Checklist

Are you amped up for March? What is on your to do list? Please share in the comments.

“Nation’s busiest secretary. Washington, D.C., Aug. 25. Probably the busiest Secretary in the Capitol these days is Eugenia Pope, Secretary and only employee of Wage-Hour Administrator Elmer F. Andrews. The Bureau will employ 1,000 persons in two months, but in the meantime Miss Pope must keep track of 50,000 applications for jobs, (8/25/1938).” Photograph by Harris & Ewing. From the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

It’s the end of a month and I can hardly believe it! This month, I began working on instituting new routines, including creating a chart to track my progress.

How did I do this month?

OK for a first month but certainly far from perfect.

Lessons learned this month:

My routines are already bearing fruit!

I didn’t announce to the world exactly what routines and projects I was working on. I wasn’t expecting anyone else to notice any changes. All I wanted was for myself and my family to feel like we are functioning better. It was a pleasant surprise however, to get some unexpected third party positive feedback noticing improvements due to our new routines. It is a great motivation to keep going.

It’s unfortunate that New Year’s coincides with cold and flu season.

The first half of the month was far more successful for me than the second half, mainly due to our family coming down with severe colds that are taking a while to shake. Just as you get fired up about a resolution and starting a new routine, a major disruption, like illness really shakes you off that routine. It is taking me some time to get back to where I was at the beginning of the month. Part of it is physical recovery from the illness and part of it is demotivation from having my new routines disrupted just as I was getting started.

Blogging, cleaning and organizing, exercise, pick any two.

So far, despite my best efforts this month, my attempts to put a routine in place to make at least some progress each day on blogging, cleaning and organizing and exercising, I find that I have not yet been able to get all 3 of those things done in any one day. The best I can do is 2 of 3. I am still hopeful that by the end of the year, I will find a way to figure out how to do all 3 in one day.

If you struggle with time management, a routine checklist is a great visualization tool.

Some people might be able to manage their time perfectly well with nothing other than a calendar and a to do list. For me, a calendar and to do list don’t capture all of the “routine” jobs I want to get done every day. The routine checklist helps me to understand in advance when my routine is going to be disrupted so I set the right expectations. For example, I marked out on my January checklist when we would be on vacation so I knew that we would not be home to accomplish any of the home routines at that time.

A new month is a great time for a new start.

My checklist has been motivating and demotivating. By the end of the month, my checklist shows all the baggage of lazy days, sickness, and all the other reasons why I didn’t get done what I wanted to. It can be a little dispiriting to look at a lot of blank boxes you wish were checked. But it is also great to look forward to a brand new month and a brand new checklist that is fresh and clean and free of all that baggage. If you are playing along, below is a blank form for February.

• February 2013 – Routine Chart

Where are you at this point on your annual goals/life goals or New Year’s Resolution? Please share in the comments.

A week ago I finally had the chance to visit the new(ish) Martin Luther King Jr. memorial. If you are a long-time reader of this blog, you may remember, when I first blogged about the fundraising efforts for the memorial 3 years ago! Whenever we had cause to be in DC, I would keep bringing up the fact that there was a brand new monument to visit and for one reason or another there was always something else to see.

Finally, driving back from a visit to Maryland, we made a special effort to see the MLK memorial. Our timing was perfect! It was a lazy Sunday morning and there was a light drizzle. All of DC was shrouded in fog and mist. It was an amazing time to visit monuments and gave an other-worldly feel to the experience. My husband and I both felt it was like the visions you see in movies of people walking into heaven.

We couldn’t find the memorial at first. It was tucked back unassumingly from the road — almost hidden in plain sight.

Although there was a lot of controversy when it was built about having too many monuments on the Mall, it fits in perfectly. It is scaled just right so that you feel the power of the space but at the same time you make the connection to other events in time and place.

It’s not a huge memorial (at least as DC memorials go) but a powerful one. The statue of MLK is, of course, the focal point (and the tourist photo opp) but once you take that in, your eyes shift to the stone wall behind where there are many of King’s famous quotations. He was such a master of language.

The controversial edited “drum major” quote, which the Washington Post recently indicated could be eliminated from the monument. (click picture for link to Post article)

It was a very moving and meaningful experience for us and our children. If you are in DC, I highly recommend a visit.

As our thoughts turn to remembering our national history, it has been wonderful to see the increase in popular scholarship on African American history. We seem to be on a rising tide where people feel more and more comfortable speaking about the experiences of their families (or being more frank with historical facts) and more and more fascinating details are being brought to light about slavery and the African American experience. Some of the interesting recent examples include the following PBS documentaries:

• “Soul Food Junkies” – a look at African American history through food but also confronting issues that face us all such as changing our dietary traditions without changing our identity.
• “The Abolitionists” – an incredible documentary about the courageous leaders of the movement to end slavery in this country, including many names that I never knew before.

Living in a Southern state, I have come to learn that there is still much more to be said about our nation’s past and that our general understanding of issues of slavery and discrimination is simplistic at best. These were very complex relationships on so many levels, both at the individual and societal levels. While it may be hurtful or sad to hear some of these memories, I find there is a lot of inspiration to be found from the courage and heart of so many people of the past as well.

My theme word for 2013, using another Marcia Francois idea to frame it for display. I use a 3-pane frame where my word goes in the center, my reasons for making this change in the top panel and my most common excuse in the bottom along with reasons to overcome the excuse.

Last year I was introduced to Marcia Francois’ one word yearly theme concept. In addition to whatever specific resolutions you have for a given year, you boil all of them down to a one word theme that encompasses your aspirations.

Last year, I chose “Energy” as my theme word and boy did I need a lot of energy in 2012!

I had so much going on that my blogging really suffered. But, in my personal life, I did some pretty energetic things like:

• taking a 3-week cross-country USA road trip with my family
• spending 3 weeks in Richmond, Virginia while my daughter participated in various summer camps (haven’t blogged this yet but should)
• completed a gut-job renovation of our master bathroom (*will blog this later this year)

This experience taught me to be very careful choosing the yearly theme word. Whatever word you choose, be ready for your life to test you on that concept. For that reason I will never choose “money” or “health” as theme words because I don’t want to be tested on those counts.

For my word this year, I am choosing . . . . .

Not a very exciting word to be sure but one that is a definite challenge for me. I am not a huge fan of “routines.” I like my life to be more loose and flexible. When I hear the word “routine,” my first thought is “boredom.” Apartment Therapy recently wrote a post on this sharing that the author used to feel that routines were the “death knell of the creative mind.”

Sometimes I feel like the only person in the world that feels this way. You often hear about people who just love to have a daily routine to fall back on. They find it comforting to know in advance exactly what they are going to do each and every single day. When you become a parent, people advise, “Children love routines.” I have found as a parent that it is not necessarily that the children love the routines but that the parents do.

So I don’t love routines at all and I am pretty terrible about following them. So why am I choosing this as my theme word?

Because I read a post somewhere over the past year (can’t remember now what it was) connecting money and time. The post basically said that managing money and managing time are very similar. I am pretty good at managing money so I thought, why not try applying lessons I have learned over time about managing money to managing my time better.

The organizational tool that has made the biggest difference in managing our finances has been Quicken. We document every expense, we run multiple budgets and automated savings programs. We have a system for doing all of this and it takes time each week to keep it going.

Our time is just as valuable as our money so my experiment this year is to try to take the same documentation approach to my time. I am hoping that if I learn to document how my time is spent, and spend more time looking ahead and planning, I will gradually become better and better at managing my time.

That’s where the routines come in. Just as a spendthrift needs a budget as a first step to getting money coming in to balance with money going out, a time-challenged person needs some kind of baseline routine to make sure all the necessary tasks get completed. My routines will never be the type where there is an hour-by-hour task list. (I would have trouble motivating myself to get out of bed at that level of organization.) But I am starting at least with a list of recurring tasks to get done each day.

I started off creating a chart for the month where I listed the tasks to be done across the top and the days down the column. I then check off whether I accomplished that task each day. I made one for myself and one for each of my daughters. If you want to try the same for yourself, here is a blank copy of my chart.

• January 2013 – Routine Chart

As of now, we are six days into the new year and how are things going?

Sadly, I have yet to have a single day where I actually accomplished every single item on my “routine” list. However, I do not feel defeated. At this point, I am still in the information-gathering phase. Since I am bad at planning routines (in part because I am a person who likes to try lots of new things all the time), I need to figure out what is realistic for our family. I also have to figure out how much extra time I need to factor in for various emergencies, errands, etc. So, I will keep attempting my January routine. At the end of the month, if I still can’t get everything done, I will tweak again for February, then March, etc. Hopefully, by December, I will have some repeatable, accomplishable routine that works for us.

Did you set a New Year’s resolution or theme word for 2013? Please share in the comments.

P.S. For anyone looking for inspiration on how to set up a routine, you can follow Apartment Therapy’s “January cure.”

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.

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.