Now that I have achieved my long-term goal of moving to Scotland (and all the work that entailed), it's now time for me to come up with some new goals! Don't worry, I have plenty:
Goal #1: Save money to buy a house.
Goal #2: "Homeschool" (term used very loosely) Youngest who will start school next year.
Goal #3: When Youngest starts school, get myself back into the workforce. Sitting home alone all day is not appealing. And, I do want to get back into science. So, that gives me nearly a year to explore my options and get myself out there.
Goal #4: Get on a household cleaning routine with a little cleaning each weekday so I can relax and have fun on weekends. Also, do meal planning as a way to save money on groceries.
Goal #5: Get in shape and lose some weight.
Some of you already know where this is going. (Sis?) Another clue: Arielle's comments on my post a few days ago that she's trying the Uncalendar got me thinking.
Uncalendar is an excellent tool for setting goals and focusing your energy on working toward them, so of course that's who I turn to when I need a powerful way to set and achieve my goals. Those of you who are unfamiliar with this excellent life-management system can read all about it in my Uncalendar review.
The Uncalendar Lifestyle Pro planner system in the 3 ring binder helped me enormously while I was preparing to move to Scotland, homeschooling both my kids and keeping track of various other aspects of my life.
Now, in order to keep track of my goals listed above, I have ordered the Uncalendar Lifestyle Half Size planner (so it can fit in my bag). Actually I ordered two, because two of them fit into a flat-rate shipping envelope so it didn't cost any more to ship two than to ship one. And, shipping to the UK for both planners totalled less than 13 bucks, which is an excellent price!
I will use my Half Size Uncalendar as my Goals Workbook to keep me on track with my goals listed above. I'll sketch out my goals on the Goals pages of my book, and break them down into do-able tasks.
On the weekly pages I'll record what homeschooling lessons we did that day, what exercise I did (cardio and/ or strength), plan dinner menus, and I'll check off my weekly cleaning tasks as I complete them.
I'll use the monthly section to keep track of expenses, bills paid, income and (hopefully) savings to work toward home ownership.
I'll use the Data section for building my contacts list for future employment.
And I'll use the Notes section for writing my Mid-Month and Monthly Reviews inspired by Charlie Gilkey which are always very useful for keeping me on track and aware of the weeks progressing.
I am very excited about this plan!
While I'm waiting for my Uncalendars to arrive, I'm getting ideas from Uncalendar's goal setting tips and other sections of The Training Room (which I like to peruse periodically) for more advice on setting and implementing my goals.
As you might imagine, Uncalendar planners are extremely popular with students. Interestingly, I've recently discovered that Uncalendar planners are very popular with nursing students in particular. I can definitely see how the Un's structure and flexibility would be extremely useful for busy nursing students balancing classwork and clinicals (not to mention the rest of their life!). On Allnurses.com there is a forum where a lot of nurses and students recommend the Uncalendar. I'm fascinated!
Click on the following links to see my reviews of the Full-Size Uncalendar Lifestyle and Half-Size Uncalendar Lifestyle.
Click through to my post Secrets for Success to see why the Uncalendar system is so useful for setting and achieving goals.
What techniques do you like to use to help you figure out your goals and make a plan for achieving them?
To answer your last question, I found Julie Morgensterns book "Time-Management from the Inside Out" a great and very helpful tool. First I categorized my life (like: work, kids, household, relationship, hobbies etc. etc. etc.). Then you define your overal end goals. Next you define the steps/subgoals. As a last step I subdiveded each subgoal into daily or weekly mini-goals, which I put on my Todo-list.
ReplyDeleteI have it all in my A5 Work filo. May not entirely belong there, but the huge format was ideal for this.
It's generally working well, although I tend to put the category "me-time" at the bottom of my list(s) ...
HI jotje, I may have to check that book out. Actually, that approach is very similar to the layout of the Uncalendar Goals page. There are boxes for each category of goals with a title space (for home/ work/ personal or whatever your categories are) then lined spaces underneath for sub-goals. Then you plan out the steps in the monthly pages, and transfer tasks to the weekly schedule pages. I like this method because it forces you to go beyond dreaming about a goal and actually think about what steps you need to do every day/ week/ month to make it happen.
ReplyDeleteAnd I know what you mean about me-time tending to come in last! With other people and things that need taken care of, it can be very hard to find time (when I still have any energy left) to do things for myself.
Uncalendars are great not only for planning but also to use later as reference. Recently I looked through the Uncalendar I used while preschool-homeschooling my daughter to remember learning activities I did with her when she was my son's age now. It was really convenient to find it all written out, now my lesson planning is already done!
ReplyDeleteThe spiral bound Uncalendars (both Half and Full size) have twelve 2-page spreads in the Notes section, so I like to use a 2-page spread each month to write details. The 3-ring binder systems have twice as many Notes pages so you can use them for all kinds of stuff!
I also have a couple of the Note Taker's Delight notebooks for other subjects, and they are great. I really like the structure of the Notes pages.