Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Organizations and other goals for 2017

I don't know much about K M Weiland, but I follow her on Twitter.  I have been Kindle-less for a few months now so perhaps it is not strange that I have not once bothered to check out her books at Amazon. Or maybe Twitter posts don't do all that much to drive sales. Or, I am only one person so my actions may not be typical.

Anyway, she recently asked:

and received a few responses:

  • Three are going to work on being more organized 
  • One is trying to improve motivation
  • One will read Weiland's books
  • Three will work on workspace/desk improvement

I must admit I have simplified the responses so the answer "I will work on being more organized" was better written and less circuitous in the original.

My son and I will travel to an academic camp I am working at on January first, so we are already thinking about goal-setting. I'll touch on our plans briefly but most do not directly fit the theme of this blog.

The first thing we did was think about the range of plans - that is, not merely five goals for one area of our lives. Exercise, diet, reading, writing, care for the dog, travel, education and environmental activism were the main ones we shared. I need to work further on cooking and domestic chores as well.

In 2015, I ran more than 1000 km and had to stop due to some kind of hip injury which has since healed or faded. My original goal was to run on average every other day for more than 5km.  I started late - the weather wasn't conducive to comfortable running - and often ran four or five times a week to catch up. I once ran for 9 consecutive days. As I became more comfortable running, the distance increased to 5.4km to 6.7km to 7.2km (these distances are based on the peculiarities of my running loop and make sense in context). To catch up on both distance and total number of runs, I often ran nearly every day and after I took a few days rest, I would run far, managing a few fifteen-plus km routes.
Look at me. I claimed that I would not go into detail on non-creativity subjects. To wrap it up, in 2017, I want to start earlier in the year and aim for 6.7 km (or whatever handy distance is close) 150 times. That will put me over 1000 km for the year.
To stay on this subject for one more moment and connect it to goal setting, I found myself behind at the start of the year - I started running in March so I had to catch up 30 runs - and the need to make up the difference motivated me. I was sure I could do it, but it was always in my mind, to a nearly uncomfortable degree. And when I caught up, I thought about the nightmarish humid summers here and also about bad weather coming up in November and December so that drove me to add runs to my total as a cushion for future bad luck.

I need to set strict, challenging goals that are also achievable. Falling a little behind is okay because it motivates me to improve.

Finally back to Weiland's question about writing organization goals.

I dream of having a workspace specific to my creative needs.

We moved to a smaller apartment and plan to immigrate to Canada in 2018 so we are not going to buy stuff for this place. But I expect to return to a university teaching position and so will have a desk, maybe even a private office, there. The workspace forces the other organizational changes. I wrote Nanowrimo at my kitchen table and with the computer on my lap in bed but I would prefer a desk. But in previous university work, my time around classes was spent on preparing for class or grading and also on being social with coworkers. That latter allocation can certainly be improved upon but do recall that I live in a country where few people speak my language so only at work can I easily chat. Chatting at work is more valuable to me than drinking and chatting on Friday nights, for example.  Anyway, I plan to make my office workspace my writing workspace and will organize my desk for that. That pretty much takes care of time management as well.




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