Time Struggle – Happy New Year!
“Blue Unsalted” © 2009, Jennifer Ressmann – “Mini Masterpiece” series
One of my crosses to bear in life revolves around time. I have a hard time dealing with the fact the life goes by really quickly and I will never have time to do all the wonderful things I want or need to do. How do we not live to be 300! You’ll often hear me say “oh, about 2 or 3 years ago… when really whatever it was happened 4 or 5 years ago”. I really don’t know how to deal with this any better than to mostly ignoring it and doing my best to enjoy every day.
Because of this I keep a very busy busy schedule. I bite off way more than I can chew and I work hard to get a lot of it done. Sometimes I have no Idea what I’m doing and I feel like I’m doing a mediocre job. I find that I have to stop caring if the work isn’t perfect and just move forward. Do my best, not worry about it too much, and move on.
On that note – I am beginning to schedule my year better and set important goals.
Want to do this for yourself?
- Start by reviewing last year. What did you accomplish? Write it all down. Some people aim to come up with 100 items. This year I came up with about 10-20 big things.
- Then, write down what you need to work on for your new year – your goals. Come up with some assorted categories to focus on. For example: family, home projects, exercise, work related. Break everything down as much as you need to – including actions you need to take to accomplish your goals.
- From here, make your schedule in a calendar for a certain period of time – monthly, quarterly or yearly.
- Section out areas of time to focus on your categories (family, home projects, etc). And then in each section/category write down the action you need to do for that. You are probably familiar with this for your job – but you can plan this way for all your efforts and get more done.
- This can be a really big project. It may take many days or weeks, so try to start at the beginning of December so you can have it all set up for your New Year!
- This is a really great way to accomplish more, stop procrastinating and fulfilling your goals! Fantastic! I’m so excited!
Other helpful articles about getting balance, setting your yearly plan and organizing your time:
Lisa Call’s article on Balance: www.makebigart.com/2010/01/balance/
Pam at Gingerbread Snowflakes: http://gingerbreadsnowflakes.com/node/140
Bob Wogrin – Setting goals as an artist: www.wogrin-art.com/goals.htm
Alyson the Art Biz Coach discusses Celebrating Your Accomplishments: www.artbizblog.com/2011/12/accomplishments2011.html
Search for these topics online as well. Just make sure not to spend all your time researching and take the time to do the actually planning work.
Happy New Year!
jennressmann.wordpress.com 
This is a great post on celebrating the past year and setting goals for the new year. I have yet another idea. I plan to write 2012 as a year in review at the beginnig of 2012. So I will go in my imagination to December 22, 2012, or somewhere close and write out what I have done for the year as though I have alread done it.
Hi Judith – Thanks! It’s fun to put together the plan for the year.
And, yes, I’ve seen others work this idea, too – writing your goal as if it has happened. I hope it works great for you. Maybe you’ll share your feelings at the end of the year?
🙂