Why my Routines Rule.

I get a lot done in a day.  I like getting a lot done in a day.  Sometimes people ask me how I do so much.

The answer?  I cheat.

Seriously, I do.  My routines are how I cheat.  I automate as much of the mundane activity in my life as I can and by doing so I free up a ton of mental and emotional energy.  I automate things using my routines and my lists.  

Think of every task you need to get done to get ready in the morning.  

• Open eyes
• Turn off alarm clock
• step out of bed.
• Shower
• brush teeth
• comb hair
• get dressed
• etc etc etc

If we had to think of every one of those tasks we would go absolutely crazy.  But we don't have to.  Our brain takes care of it for us.  I realized I should do that with more stuff. (It wasn't just my idea, Gretchen Rubin, helped)

I don't want to rely on my subconscious to remember everything, so I make lists.  For pretty much everything.

The most prominent, and the most life changing, has been my nighttime routine.  I keep a list taped to the inside of my pantry that has all of the things I need to do each night for a successful day the next day.  Things like making sure I have all of the ingredients for dinner, packing my lunch, feeding the pets, and cleaning the kitchen.  I'm sure these tasks are going on in almost every one's house, the only difference is I don't have to think about it.  And that's awesome.

Because despite what people occasionally suggest, my routines don't take away spontaneity, they provide space for it.  With my mind free from remembering to switch the laundry, I can plan that awesome murder mystery dinner party I want to host instead.    And instead of "getting ready for the next day" being a mystery phrase that my husband hears me utter, it's a quantifiable thing that he can see and even do for me on occasion! ;)

What the heck is a zone anyway?

Thank you for the positive feedback on my family meeting posts!  I love hearing that people are considering implementing this habit and I'd love to hear how it works for you and your family!

The most frequent feedback I got on my worksheets was "What is a zone??"

Hmm, people aren't familiar with the weird jargon we use in our family meetings?  Noted.

I have a very strong dislike for cleaning.  I'm not that good at it, and it doesn't come naturally to me what needs done when.  So, like the scheduling freak that I am, I made a type of schedule.

This list is very specific for our house.  So unless you have the exact same house, pets, and concerns as me, it will need some modification, but maybe it could serve as a launch point.  Personally, I think everything would be just a little bit better if we could somehow get it down to 5 zones.  By the 6th week, it's usually extremely obvious what zone is next.  One whiff of the dogs breathe and I'll know she's up next week.

That probably leads sane people to wonder why I need a list.  If I can tell the dogs breathe is bad, why can't I just brush her teeth?  I don't have an answer to that.  All I know is that before I had this system, I lived in a constant state of feeling behind and stressed out.  Everything seemed messy and out of control.  Now, instead of worrying if everything is perfect, I can relax and know that everything has a time to be dealt with, eventually anyway.

Some tasks simply can't wait 6 weeks. That's what the purple box in the bottom right quadrant is for.  Every Sunday there is a list of tasks that we've decided need done weekly.  Toilets, laundry, etc.  We've recently adjusted how we handle those tasks, actually, but for a long time this system worked very well for us.

So, that's what a zone is.

Family Meeting Hardware.

There are a few core pieces of accessories that support my family meeting.  I thought it'd be useful to detail what they are and how we use each.

1. Notebook

We've cycled through lots of different notebooks and tasks lists, the general idea is a place for each family member to keep their to do list for the week.  Mine, unsurprisngly, is much more invovled and complicated.  It also changes every few years.  For a while, I kept my lists electronically.  Currently I'm using an ARC notebook from staples.  I love that I can rearrange the pages.  Each week I start a fresh list.  My hsuband prefers a simple spiral notebook.  It doesn't matter what kind of system you use, but sticking with one will be incredibly helpful.  For example, make either your electronic or paper list your 'master' list.  In my experience trying to maintain both is a recipe for things getting left off or falling through the cracks. 

2. Clipboard

Our clipboard serves as our 'family' lists for the week.  For a while, we kept both of our tasks lists on it as well, but ultimately the personal notebook system worked better, not least of all because we found that each person making their own list, even if we agreed on what should be on it, made it much more likely things would be completed that week.  Now, our clipboard maintains lists we all need access to for the week; for example a list of errands, shopping list, discussion lists for the next meeting, a list of current 'projects' and misc notes.  As much as I love forms (I really love forms) creating a form for this sheet has always been unsuccessful.  For us, this sheets needs to be incredibly flexible each week.  Still, because I'm to embarrased to share our actual clipboard sheet, I made a quick sketch up of how we currently use it.

In case you are skim reading, I don't actually use this sheet.  I use a blank piece of colored paper that approximates this.  I switched to colored paper to make it easier to find the sheet if it happens to get shuffled into a pile of paper.  I keep it on a clipboard to prevent it from getting lost and to make it easier to make notes on it.  I've tried hanging in, but it was too hard to write.

I'll breifly cover the categoties:

1. Notes

This is where we make random notes from phone calls or anything else.  If it has no further action, we strike it out.  I also tend to use the back of the sheet for this purpose.

2.  Discuss List

This is the area where we write things we need to discuss at the next meeting.  It might be an argument we postponed, something from our to do list we need to verify, or a funny story we don't want to forget to share.  If we have time to talk about it during the week, we strike it out, but if it's in this section, we can be confident we won't forget about it.

3. Projects

We try to keep our number of 'active' family projects to 5 or less.  This is where we list them so we know what we are working on as a family.

4. Zone (More details on Zones here)

This is where we write the house zone for the week.  We have our house divided into 6 zones.  We keep a separate list of the activities for each zone.  Organizing our chores like this has made it much easier to get to annoying tasks like cleaning the inside of the dishwasher, scrubbing the trash cans or doing the shredding.  

5. Errands & 6. Shopping Lists

These categories are pretty self explanatory. 

3. Family Binder

My family binder houses everything we need for our meeting and other things we might need to reference.  I'm a big fan of electronic files, but I still find it useful to keep these things accessible. I often think of how beautiful someone with more of a design vew could make their binder, but mine primarily reflects my preference for functionality.  Although I do have photos on the front! See?

1. Calendars

In this section I keep a sheet with every birthday, anniversary, and holiday that we celebrate in our family or for which we send cards and gifts.  We also keep any hard copy calendars we have (dance studio, preschool, work holidays, etc).  Even though I put all of that information in my google calendars, I still keep the hard copies here.

2. Goals

Each year when we set our goals, we determine the frequency we will check in with them.  I make a one page (front and back) sheet for each member of our family and we check off what we accomplished each week at the family meeting.

3. To Do lists/Projects

This is where we keep a list of all of the projects we'd like to eventually complete as a family.  This includes home improvement, future vacations and service projects.  When we complete a project, we look here and decide what we want to tackle next. 

4.Budget

I maintain our budget electronically, but each year I put a hard copy of our budget and goals in this category for us to reference if necessary.  It also has a list of major bills and due dates (particularly things like insurance, property tax, etc)

5.Wish Lists/shopping lists.

Each member of our family has a wish list.  We add things we want to purchase.  We also keep a list of things we might want but we are still thinking about.  This has helped us be much more intentional with our purchases.  

6. Chores/Zone tasks

In this section I keep a list of the responsibilities for each house 'zone'.  I'll post more on this soon.

7. Contacts.

I printed out a copy of our Christmas Card list and stuck it in. If I get a change of address during the year, I update the list and it's available for anyone to reference if they have something that needs mailed. 

8.  Miscellaneous 

This section has packing lists, babysitter emergency information and other hard to categorize information that we need frequently enough to justify it being in our binder.

I hope this information has been useful and I'd love your feedback or tips on how you keep your family running smoothly!

Family Meeting Agenda Details.

I posted recently about the how critical our family meeting is to the smooth (er) operation of our family and home.  Just in case I convinced anyone to start this powerful habit, I thought I'd share a little more of the nuts and bolts of how we run our family meetings.  First, a simplified version of our weekly agenda:

For people less prone to using an agenda than me (possibly every one?), let me try to make an argument for it.  The idea behind any list I make is to get the information out of my head and in to a safe and reliable place where I can access it later. An agenda ensures that every thing is addressed without needing to spend half of my mental energy trying to remember what comes next.  But an agenda should be a tool, not a mandate.  Our agenda almost always has things crossed out or added until the next time I revise and print it.

Discussion Topics

For a long time, this was the last item on our agenda, but ultimately we decided that addressing any outstanding issues first made it much easier to focus on the other items.  This is the time of the meeting when we talk about the things that came up during the week.  Sometimes it's an argument that we agreed to table until the meeting, a hurtful comment one of us needed to share, an idea for a family project or vacation or anything else we didn't want to forget about but didn't have time to discuss throughout the week.  

Goal Check in

Every year we sit down as a family and set goals.  This is when we sit down and check in on how they are going.  For example this is when I update which books I finished that week or how many miles I ran.  It provides weekly accountability.  Sometimes it also means reevaluating those goals.  If week after week we fail to make progress on our goals, we take that as a sign that we need to change something.  Does that person need more resources or time?  Has that interest changed?  We also add relevant goal related tasks to our to do list.  I love having this early in the meeting because those are the first things on my to do list each week.

Discuss Last week

When we open our calendars, we usually take a minute to look over the last week just in case there was anything else we needed to discuss that didn't come up during our discussions.

Calendar & Schedule update

This is the majority of our meeting.  We compare work schedules, double check childcare arrangements, transportation, etc.  To make sure we don't miss anything we have a sub list that we review every week.

§  Work Schedule

In our family work schedules change from week to week, so this is when we talk about when we are working and make any necessary changes.

§  Activities 

This is when we discuss classes, appointments, parties, etc.  It's also when we add any related items to our task lists.

§  Athletic/Workouts

Because one of our family goals is to be more active, we started planning our runs, workouts, and family bike rides at the beginning of the week.

§  Special Events

Vacations, visitors or other things going on.

§  Chores/this week’s tasks

Any major cleaning or maintenance tasks that need to get done this week get added to the schedule

§  Group responsibilities

We participate in a variety of community and hobby organizations.  This is when we review each, from book club to church, to volunteering.

§Kids Activities

I'm always amazed at how such small people have such busy schedules!

Menu Planning & Grocery List

When we had more time and less to discuss, we used to make our menu for the week as a family.  Now we take turns, but we still take a minute to discuss it and make any last minute changes.

Chores

Each week we try to focus on getting one area of the house clean, this is when we assign chores for that area or anything else that needs done.

To Do lists

Unfortunately, we rarely fully complete our to do lists.  In order to support each other, we share what we didn't get done and offer help when we can.

Budget

We do our budget yearly, so this is just a check in to make sure everything is going as expected.  We also discuss any major bills or expenses coming up.

Projects

We have a list of projects, both personal, professional, and as a family.  We keep a full list in our family binder, but the few active projects are discussed at the end of the meeting and we make sure we know the next steps for each.  Examples of projects are "Remodeling Master Bedroom" "Prepare Taxes" "Find a Preschool" etc.  

Treats

Especially if involving children, I think it's great to end with a treat.  We used to have brownies, but since we made our recent dietary changes, Brownies are out!  I'm still on the lookout for a a great end of meeting treat!

For a look at the things we use in our family meeting, check out this post: Family Meeting hardware

My Family Meeting

Family Meeting.

I know the phrase makes some people cringe, maybe it’d be less dull sounding, although twice as cheesy, if we called it the team huddle, the go party, or some other euphemism for ‘sitting down to get your rear in gear and your life in order.’

I’ve decided that the family meeting has been my “Keystone habit”; the single habit that has had an incredible ripple effect of positive changes everywhere in my life.  Because of our family meeting, our days run smoother, we accomplish more of what we want to do and we move with intention and purpose towards our long term goals.  Our family meeting has become the single most important hour of our week and I can’t imagine how we’d keep everything straight without it.  But inevitably, when I mention our family meeting, I’m met with a mixture of amazement or disbelief. I’ve been thinking a lot about the purpose and power of this relatively simple habit, and I can’t stress enough how important it has become to me.

Our family meeting is a safe and special time and place to come together as a family.  We discuss grievances, share ideas, support each other’s goals, and take care of the daily business of running a household; things like work schedules, kids classes, and our budget.

The top three reasons people have given me for not having a family meeting are detailed below:

  1. There is no way my spouse would participate.

That’s okay!!  We can’t change anyone but ourselves and in my experience trying only causes problems.  I think it is wonderful for families to come together and meet regularly, but even if that’s not possible, a family meeting is still possible.  In fact, it’s probably even more important.  Bills still need paid, appointments confirmed, goals checked in with. In other words, the family meeting is steering the ship, and someone needsto be at the helm!  Long before my husband participated, I had a ‘family meeting’ each week.  My children are very young, so they don’t currently participate, but I hope that as they get older, they will.  Not because they have to, but because it provides a way to help steer the direction we are moving as a family.  Because ulitmately that's why I want my family meeting to do:  provide direction and purpose.

2. I’m too busy!

I work almost full time, I have 2 toddlers, and I strive to be a contributing member of my community, so I do know how it feels to be too busy to breathe.  Still, I truly believe that a family meeting is a worth the time investment.   If you’ve never read Stephen Convey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change , I urge you to do so.  In it, he tells the story of a man who is laboring to cut down a tree.  Someone suggests to him that he should stop and sharpen the saw. The man believes he is too busy to stop sawing and sharpen the saw.  Sharpening the saw would take no time at all compared to the time saved by using a sharper saw, but the man is so busy cutting down the tree he hasn't taken the time to really think about what he needs to get the job done.  Each swing would be that more effective and the work would be reduced by simpling sharpening the saw. A family meeting is sharpening the saw. It takes time, usually about an hour for us, but I can guarantee that I save more time than that each week as a result.  Time spent frantically looking for a babysitter because my husband and I didn’t realize we both had important commitments on the same night, time running out to buy a last minute gift for a party I forgot about, time on the phone with a utility company dealing with a bill that’s past due.  Not to mention the mental and emotional energy of worrying tasks that slipped through the cracks, goals and dreams that seem further from reality with passing years or relationship tears that fester instead of being cleaned and allowed to heal.  I’m not saying our family meeting eliminates these things, but in our family, it dramatically reduces them.  An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I am not arguing that time isn’t a valuable and scare resource, but I do hope I have made the argument that the time invested in preparation and planning will pay dividends.

3. I have no idea how to even start.

If you have never had a family meeting, I imagine it can be a little intimidating to start.  The most important step is the first one, right?  For most families, I would say a calendar is a great place to start.  Family calendars get crazy fast.  Most people I know have a calendar of some sort, so the first step is to simply sit down with your calendar and a notepad.  Make sure every time dependent task is on the calendar. (Work, school, social commitments, classes, bill due dates, holidays, service appointments, workouts, etc).  In our family, we look at the next two weeks in details. If you’ve never done this, you will be surprised at how many things will come up.  For example, the appointment for “Book Club” on Tuesday might remind you that you need to finish your book and pick up the wine you are bringing and the appointments for your son’s doctor’s appointment might remind you to jot down your questions for the doctor and pull out the immunization records. We often find more logical or efficient ways to get things done when looking at things together.  By writing it in my notebook ahead of time, I have plenty of time to make sure I’m not rushed or missing anything when each appointment arrives.

I’m planning to share how we coordinate calendars and the details of our meetings soon, but in the meantime, I hope I’ve made a compelling argument for at least giving a family meeting a shot.

One final piece of advice: serve brownies.  Everybody likes a meeting with brownies!

Did I convince you?  If so, check out our family's agenda here: Agenda!

I manage what I measure.

There seem to be several themes threading through different areas of my life, and this is certainly one of them.  It's come up multiple times, most recently in Rueben's book Better Than Before: What I Learned About Making and Breaking Habits--to Sleep More, Quit Sugar, Procrastinate Less, and Generally Build a Happier Life.

It's true.  And I've decided to use it intentionally in a few areas of my life.

Goals

I don't have resolutions, they don't work for me. But I've written a lot lately about my goals. In order to achieve my goals I must be able to measure them.  Not everything I want to do is easily measured, so I come up with proxy goals to support my values. My goals graph a bit like this:

Value:                             Goal

Be health                         ------------->   Self propel 500 miles

Engage my brain             ------------->   Read 50 books

Have a strong marriage  -------------->  Plan at least one date night per month

I can manage what I can measure.  I can measure a 4 mile walk, a 2 mile run, a 10 mile hike, etc.  There are obviously mulitple metrics for measuring health, but this year I chose to focus on physical activity.  Same with engaging my brain, and my marriage.  For me, taking the time to sit down and set goals make a tremendous difference in promoting my values in my life.

Money

Most people I've talked to with a succesful budget know you have to measure to make any changes in your budget.  Aribrary setting a budget "We will spend no more than 60 dollars eating out" is way less sucessful than first measuring how much you actually spend eating out.  I've been managing my budget this way for years.  Our budget isn't a limit, but a guide and each year, we sit down and look at how much we budgeted compared to how much we spent and make applicaple adjustments. In looking at last years budget, we realized that the less we engaged with it, the less intentional we were with our money and decisions.  So this year we came up with a new system to help us both better monitor our money.

Belonings

It seems like I can't write, say or think anything lately without it somehow coming back to the Marie Kondo's books.  (I recently finished her second book, 

Spark Joy: An Illustrated Master Class on the Art of Organizing and Tidying Up days after it's release!)  It mind sound crazy to measure your belonings, but I really believe that for me that is why Kondo's method was so effective.  By collecing all of my clothes, books, tools, etc I had to measure how much I had.  Did our family need 5 tape measures?  7 pitchers?  a hundred pair of baby socks?  For me, the answer was no.  And I realized that by scattering my belongs, but NOT measuring them I had lost the ability to manage them.  I chose to keep extra hair brushes around instead of managing where I put my hair brush and made a thousand other small decisions that made my life less managable.

KonMari: Hitting the wall, then climbing the wall, then...

falling off the wall...

If you are considering jumping into Kondo's book and method, there's a few things I think you should know.

1. It's going to get worse before it gets better.

Perhaps this is why she offers the advice that you should fully discard before you organize.  And I tried, I really really did. But there's some obstacles!  For example my garbage cans can only hold so much garbage (same holds for the trash cans at the pocket park, not that I would desperately take anything there ever...)  Also, there were LOADS of things to be taken for donation. (Hmm, come to think of it, she may have told me to identify that ahead of time, too...) And there were things I was pretending to sell by posting witty captions on my moms sale group and people would fail to pick them up and my entry way filled up with weird things.  The short version: It's going to get worse before it gets better.

2. You're going to need a sanctuary, and possibly wine.

For me, it was my closet.  I followed her instructions and started with clothes and my closet was as close to a magazine spread as I care to get (no one is getting between me and my Princess Leia footy PJs,)  Anyway, I am very lucky to have a large and now insanely clean and organized closet.  Multiple times during the process I'd retreat from a lumbering pile of towels (every towel?? Are you SURE?  Geeze that's a lot of towels.)  with a cup of tea or glass of wine to remind myself this is why I'm doing this.  Once I got started I desperately wanted (want) to finish.  So things not only got messier, I got a bit frantic about it.  Sanctuary was necessary.  I am lucky I work so I had to leave the house and work, God help the Stay at Home parent who lives in their self imposed prison of purging 24 hours a day.  

3. This might actually change your life

I didn't really expect life changing to happen.  I mean, every book I read changes my life in some way, but although I was excited to 'tidy' I didn't really anticipate magic.  But there is some magic!  For me, the magic was the insanely simple sounding idea that my belongs should be taken care of.  This is literally so easy I try to teach it to my 3 year old every single day.  Yet for some reason it was out of my reach.  I actually laughed when I first read that "Every thing should have a home."  But guess what?  EVERYTHING SHOULD HAVE A HOME!  Because then it can go there.  And when you need it, it will be there. Everything.  And since we've started working on this the amount of times my husband and I have asked "Hey, where is the___?" or "Do we have any ____?" has dropped dramatically.  

I'm not done, but I can see the start of the light at the end of the tunnel.  And as promised, the process gets easier and more automatic as I go along.  I'm still dreading sentimental items, particularly photos, but I firmly believe in the principles and the process.

Books, books, books.

I hadn't yet asked Gavin to read my current project book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing when I asked him what he thought abuot the idea that childrens literacy was directly proportional to the number of books in their home.

His thought process was simliar to mine.  "Seems reasonable."

But we also agreed that it's likely that the actual causation is that people who like to read have a lot of books and are more likely to teach their children to read.  Or people who are better educated have more books and are more likely to teach their children to read.

We concluded that, with the exception of having available age appropriate material, the addition or removal of books with no other changes to a household shoulnd't have an effect on a literacy.

But Mom Guilt is real so I had to do some pretty dedicated logical thinking to overcome the following thoughts.

"Oh no! I've ruined my children by reading digital books!"
and more relevant to my current project
"I can't declutter my books! How will my kids ever get into College??"

After my rallying against ever folding my clothes, getting rid of books was my next biggest complaint.

But once again Kondo won me over. "Imagine a book shelf with only books you REALLY love." And that made me realize that deep down I don't really LOVE books.  I love reading, but I honestly prefer digitial books both for ease of use and not having to touch paper.  I know I've offended book lovers everywhere, but it was an entirely new realization I made about myself.  I love to visit bookstores.  I have very found memories of visiting a used bookstore regularly with my mom, and I can enjoy both of those while still letting go of objects that are cluttering my space.

Then it was time for the kids books.  My primary goal was to get all of the books in one place.  On one hand, I love having books all over mt house. I love that the kids can pick up a book in almost any room.  On the other hand, they frequently can't find their favorite books.  So I decided to combine all of the books.

Well almost, I decided both boys should be able to keep some books in their room.  My goal is 10.  I will almost certianly fail as my son is a major book hoarder.  I'm fairly certian he will continue to collect books from the cabinet and his brothers room until he once again is drowning in them. Time will tell!

We have a lot of books.  And I'm almost certain we will continue to collect more and we will have to evaluate the space for them and method for them.  But for now, at least the books are (mostly) in the same place.  (I also forgot about the piles in the car!)

I've also come to realize that almost everything is better shared.  The books we are done with (or more likely were duplicates) I passed on to my friends and neighbors to use and enjoy.

The Art of Tidying Up, Intro

I get most of my books from the library.  Consequently, I'm often late to the party when it comes to the book everyone is reading.

I'd heard people mention this book and how it had affected them.  I knew I wanted to read it.  I read almost everything, but self help books, specifically self help books abut organizing your life and mind, are my favorites.

I've had a slightly unique experience reading this book because I read it right on the heels of  "Getting Things Done" by David Allen,  "Essentialism" by Greg McKeown, and "7 Habits of Highly Successful People" by Stephen Covey.  Apparently the last two months have been about simplifying for me!

I will admit, I almost put the book down when she insisted on folding clothes.  I don't fold clothes. As silly as this sounds, I'm adamant on this point.  Still, she made a compelling enough point for me to reconsider.

I'm glad I didn't give up on the little book.  I read it quickly as it's not very long.  And then I thought about it for a few days.  I decided I'd try it, although I wasn't going to dive in, I certainly wasn't going to start talking to my clothes and I wasn't going to undertake a life changing Tidying Event.

But I might have done all three.

I have a very large, mostly organized closet.  Still, when I actually took everything out I was kind of surprised at how much I had.  As instructed, I picked up every single piece of clothing, including socks, stockings, and coats and made a decision.  And as promised, it got a little easier as I went along.  At the end, I bagged up four bags of clothes and set about to fold my clothes.

The book is adamant.  Discard 1st, organize 2nd.  But I couldn't very well live with the remaining contents of my closet on the floor, so I organized them. 

 It was true.  I looked at my closet and saw only things I loved.  And it is also true that despite my fears, I have yet to find myself without something to wear and it's been over a week.

But it was a lot of work, and did I really need to process EVERYTHING I owned? 

So I googled "People who failed at Konmari" "Konmari Critics," and other random phrases like this.  I found almost no one.  Those I did find often didn't try the method, but discounted it ahead of time.  No easy out, I guess.  

For me, the book has provided a fundamental shift in the way I view my relationship with my things.  I don't hope to become a extreme minimalist, but I do want to own only things I love.  I want my house and my head to have room to grow and explore and love and live.

This book is not for everyone.  Some people love things and being surrounded by them.  But as I just started reading it for the second time, apparently it is for me.

Wish me luck as I dive in to the next categories!

Why I became my own gardener.

"I really need to spend more time outside."  I told myself over and over again, every time I listed ways to improve my mood and health.  "I really should exercise more."  You already read the title of the post, so the answer is obvious to you, but it wasn't too me.  Time and time again I'd tell myself these things and I'd even have success, sometimes.

Eventually the answer donned on me.  Well us, actually, as it occurred to my husband as well.  When we reconstructed our backyard, we did with the intent of making it as easily as possible for us to maintain ourselves.  And then we dove in.  We purchased a few basic tools; a push mower, a blower, a rake, trimmers; and we started working.

I believe and I am healthier and happier when I spend time outside, and if I wasn't convinced before the kids, I certainly am now.  The fresh air invigorates and charges them, and a day with time outside is noticeably easier for everyone.  If this is true for them, why wouldn't it be for me?

I never actually intended to have a gardener.  I grew up with a father who did all yard work, maintenance and repairs himself.  Prior to purchasing my home, I bounced around apartments for a while.  I remember a few weeks in to living in our new home, I noticed in passing that the grass was a bit long.  It wasn't until our neighbor told us that she'd had her gardener trim the grass that I realized with embarrassment that this was now MY responsibility.  So her gardener became my gardener as I struggled with the overwhelming realities of owning our first home. 

But now, I savor the chance to escape outside for a few hours to rake, and plant and trim.

This decision isn't without it's downsides.  I am not in the running for the most immaculately maintained yard on the block. And there are days (or weeks or maybe a month here and there) when the grass goes untrimmed and the leaves unraked.  But they serve as a reminder that I need to do get outside and exercise and it causes an immediate and visual consequence of failing to do so.

This isn't a condemnation of having a gardener or even an encouragement to take on your own yard work.  Rather, it's an example of the way that I'm working to make the processes and outcomes I want in life work together with the my daily habits and activities.  For me, it's not enough to say "I will go outside each day." Or even "I will exercise twice a week."  It's better to plan to make all of the things around me conspire together towards my ultimate purposes. 

Goal Setting

I've always set goals. When it was just me, it was pretty simple: I'd sit down with a notebook, usually at the end of the year, and sketch out a 1, 5, 10 year plan and some major goals and see how I was doing against the previous years goals. 

Now I have a husband and kids who also have unique goals and dreams. We want our family to grow and thrive together, so every year at our family summit we sit down and review our goals together.

I started off this year having a really difficult time establishing my goals. I have a wonderful husband, two healthy kids, and a job I sometimes love and usually like.  

I recently read Covey's "7 Habits of Highly Effective People." I highly recommend it and it gave me some great perspective for creating some goals for myself.




I have weekly benchmarks for most of my goals.  I also made a cheat sheet to remind me of my goals throughout the week.

This year my goals include propelling myself 500 miles (via running, biking, etc); reading 50 books, keeping in contact with extended family and professional contacts, and writing.

We also have family goals, including monthly date nights, dedicated time with our children, trying a new food and activity each month.

The beginning of the year is too frantic of a time to sit down and set goals.  Although I love the freshenss of a new year and new goals, I've convinced myself that I prefer the few month head start and less pressured timeframe!

Does anyone else set their goals mid year?