Making this year different

I don’t want to get washed away

Sometimes it feels I start with plans and those plans are washed away by the tidal wave of the unresolved.

As I was sharing, I am spending this week thinking about the coming year and in what ways I want it to be different from last year.

As I sat down with my journal this morning, I could sense a level of despair as I could see the unresolved things piling up an I began to wonder whether I could actually change things the way I believe I need to.

I have a sense that part of the answer for me is to implement a more intentional structure to my days, weeks and year.

I first read Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of highly effective people before I was married and have read it several times since then.

One of the illustrations he gives came back to me this morning. This is a link to Covey explaining the illustration himself:

Big Rocks: putting first things first

Basically what he is saying is that it is important to put the most important things in your schedule first and let other things fit around them.

I now have my 2011 year planner up next to my desk, and there was a sense of satisfaction at being able to start to get a picture of what the year is looking like. I particularly enjoyed marking in time to have holidays.. I love holidays.

I am realising though that I also need to be more structured in my days and my weeks. I need to face the fact that this past year I have been more reactionary than I would have liked. There has been lots of reasons for that but I really want to change it.

I wrote in my journal today that I want to set aside one day a week for writing and development.

I also want to re-commit to having lunch with Leeanne at least one day a week.

I want to set time aside to exercise and play with the kids (those two things can sometimes be combined).

I also think it will be helpful to isolate one hour a day to work on emails.

At night times I want to go to bed with enough time to read. I love reading and it helps keep me sane.

As I started to write these things down, I started to get a sense of being back on top of things, of being able to make choices. I realised that I was naming principles and structures that could help me do what I want to do.

I know it will never work perfectly but if I can get back to organising my week from my goals and my values, I think more of what I want to achieve might actually happen.

How do you go with this stuff?

Do you have systems or rhythms that work for you?