Hello World,
2018 seems to be flying by. Towards the end of last year I created a an excel workbook of things that I wanted to do in the coming year fully aware that I might not get half of them done. One of these sheets includes books that I am planning on reading for my professional development (I have a separate shelf in my bookshelf for some history books that I want to read as well).
Part of me is a bit concerned that I am rushing ahead at too fast a pace, that I will need to recalibrate things. But I think it is a case that I should rather just track things and stretch and try and figure things as I go along as well. There is no pressure to knock every item off the list, it is a stretch goal. Perhaps, I will do it slow and sporadically with big things every once in a while but I am trying to be consistent and get the things that matter more sorted.
It is also useful to keep track of where things that seem unproductive get done, for example I needed to have someone come and measure part of my ceiling to come and replace it where it got water damaged from a leaking geyser. All of the little admin that takes time that just needs to get done.
With every goal on the spreadsheet I set out a criteria for evaluating completeness, which was surprisingly difficult to do. And then I played around with some conditional formatting so that when I mark the items as complete with a Y, the rows turn green.
There are a total of 44 things to get done on the list which I broadly categorised as administrative, personal, professional, creative and health goals. There are 42 books that I want to read. I have only completed the one, the Sketchnote handbook and I will post some notes about it in the near future, but it has changed my way of notetaking completely.
In addition to the main sheet which keeps track of the overall goals, I have created a summary sheet and so far I have been adding weekly sheets with a bit of planning on them as well. I think that being able to see everything that I need to do (and add in additional bits) is helping me figure out where I am and what I am getting done. A lot of what I do is repetitive administrative tasks and because you only really see the results if they are not done rather than the results of the work being done I think this is a way of re-assuring myself that my invisible work matters.
Okay, enough rambling.
Love and plans,
Trisha