The theme for this month is 'balance'. Balance is hard for me. I do a lot of things, wear a lot of hats, work as efficiently as I can to be as productive as I can be, which means I often neglect things that are good for me and which feel good when I do them, but do not meet my very strict definition of 'productive'. I love how I feel when I'm productive. I don't love how I feel when I'm neglecting something and get out of balance.
Lately I feel very out of balance. To get back in balance, I answered these questions:
A. What are the things/goals I'm trying to accomplish and work toward these days?
- Am I making progress?
- Do I feel good about that progress
- Has that neglect caused problems? What are they?
- What specific things do I need to do to address the things I'm neglecting?
- How much time will I set aside to address these? (Doesn't have to be a lot)
D. What strategy will I use to free up the time I need to do these things?
- What things will I no longer spend time on?
- What boundaries will I instate to protect my time & focus?
- What physical space do I need to have available?
- What reminders do I need?
E. Who do I have to support me? [This one is not easy for me, either.]
- My accountability partner is _______________.
- My cheerleader is _______________.
F. How am I going to reward myself for doing this stuff (based on difficulty/effort)?
- My little reward is _______________.
- My medium sized reward is _______________.
- My OMG-I-really-did-this reward is _______________.
- My accountability partner who will make sure I reward myself is _______________.
My current issues have to do with a creative practice and a meditation practice. I need to schedule these into my day. I have very reasonable and measurable goals. My meditation practice is five and a half minutes. [Seriously. Go to that link and read about it.] I set a timer. My creative practice should be at least 10 minutes. I'll set a timer for that one, too.
The challenge for me with these is that I do them better when I'm in the right head space and I haven't been, so it's hard to sit down and sketch or meditate. I think my strategy for this is to do them first thing in the day, then give myself a really awesome reward when I've done them for so long. 10 days? 30 days? [Note: I'm not interested in doing them everysingleday-all-or-nothing. 30 days with the occasional skip is still 30 days and that would be awesome. They don't have to be 30 consecutive days.] I'm still thinking about the reward thing. It brings up other issues I have about being deserving of rewards. I have more work to do on that. Maybe I should give myself a reward for accepting a reward? I'll keep you posted.