Everyone has 24 hours in their day to fill, whether you are Beyonce, the Queen or the greengrocer. You have certain things that you have to do each day such as eat and sleep, certain things that you should do such as exercise, and certain things that you want to do such as play with kittens.
At the beginning of last year I bought Leonie Dawson’s Life and Biz Workbook 2014. I wanted to focus my attention on creating an amazing year, and people had said that it was a fabulous planning tool. I didn’t fill in my workbook much, so I thought I’d revisit it this year.
One of the exercises is to fill in a pie chart with how you spend your time and another with how you want to spend your time.
My days are so varied, but this is a rough approximation of a typical weekday. I might craft in front of the TV, I might snatch an hour to blog instead of housework, but I don’t dedicate my time to doing enough to make a difference to me. I want a clean and organised house, crafting makes me happy, being prepared for my Guiding responsibilities is important to me, but I don’t make an effort to ditch the procrastination and get on with it. Instead of getting on with my Christmas crafting last year, I organised my Distress ink pads and researched racks to put them on. Very satisfying, something that was nice to have done, but not the urgent task in hand.
This is what I’ve come up with for how I want to spend my day.
I’ve swapped the procrastination for me time, and prioritised my crafting and blogging. I’ve got the TV on as I’m blogging at the moment, but Phil Spencer doesn’t need my full attention.
I need to exercise more. I do about 30 minutes a day during the week but I could and should do more.
I also want to drop some volunteering time. I spend about 4 hours a week at meetings with the Guides and Rainbows, plus the occasional District team meeting or training course, plus my WI commitment. The key word is ‘volunteer’. There is a certain amount of work that has to be done every week, but I need to concentrate on the essentials and know that I don’t have to sort out everyone’s problems as well as my own.
Some days it will happen. Some days it won’t. I know that I’ve probably forgotten things like long baths, reading and shopping, and sometimes my crafting mojo will leave me, but I have to get some focus back in my life.
Is your year still on track?
At the beginning of 2015, I resolved not to have any resolutions, not to sign up to any social media obligations like photo-a-day or blog-a-week, not to join in with quilt a month, crochet along etc. and not to heap too much pressure on myself to join in and fit in with the crowd.
