Ummmm. Happy No Longer Last Year...

Yes. Happy No Longer Last Year.

I guess since the date is 1.1.11 it's a good time to start over. Last year I started off the year focusing on how I could improve myself. I had just graduated, was jobless, and had pretty much just been forced to move back home. To the average twenty-something year old, that's about as bad as it can get. At least, it feels that way at the time. This year, I think I'm just going to start off the year by appreciating the fact that I made it through last year. I am technically no longer a recent graduate. I still don't have a real job. And I kinda still halfway live at home. But I'm not really in the same place that I was this time last year. Which to me is kind of amazing. Apparently this improving yourself stuff actually works. As long as you pick the right goals.

So on that note, here's a quick review of the goals I set in January 2010.

1. Get Organized - DONE

The goal - Find some sort of a system for me to use so as not to lose all of the information and stuff that's important to me.

The result - I am super awesome at organization. Or rather, the people I stole all my ideas from are. Anyways, I took a few different systems, from a few different book and blogs and people, and rolled them all into a system that kinda works for me. My nice shiny Franklin Covey planner is not filled with my calendar, to do list, shopping lists, inspiration pages, goal lists and my ever growing bucket list. Apparently writing things down in one place really does help. It seems like as soon as I started writing down everything, it was easier to understand what was going on in my life.



2. Get Rid of 365 Things - SUPER DONE

The goal - Pretty self explanatory. Get rid of 365 pieces of junk.

The result - It took me awhile to get moving on this one, but once I did, boy did I get moving. What really helped the most was figuring out what I really wanted my space to look like, feel like and be used for. With that in mind it was pretty easy to get rid of stuff that didn't fit the bill. In the end, i got rid of over 1000 things. The amazing part is that I don't miss anything I got rid of. And I still have A LOT of stuff. Yeah. 1000 things later and there is still too much stuff.



3. Get A Job - UBER FAIL

So..... I'm just gonna go with "Jesus didn't want me to have a real job". That's my story and I'm sticking to it. The economy sucks, etc. etc. etc. Not going to go down a list of excuses here. Simply going to deal with the fact that it's a year later and I am still unemployed. Actually, I don't say it like that anymore. I'm on vacation. It's January. I'm on winter break.



4. Take Control of My Finances - 1/2 DONE!?

The goal - Read I Will Teach You To Be Rich and have $1000 in my savings account by December 31.

The result - I read the book. I read the blog. I'm on vacation. It's hard to get paid when you're on vacation. So...... there is not $1000 in my savings account. There is however more than $1. And my student loans are up to date. And I have accounts set up for an emergency fund, a retirement
fund, and saving up for a new car. So I'm doing better than most people my age. At least I have a plan. And as soon as I get my first paycheck, from the job I'm on vacation from, I know exactly where the money needs to go. Down to the last penny. So $1000, not so much. Understanding where I am financially, done.



5. Start an Exercise Program/Routine - FAIL

The goal - Work my way back to at least high school running standards (2 miles in under 20 minutes) and increase the number of pushups and situps I can do consecutively.

The result - I think there was just too much going on in my life at one time. Exercise is a good idea. And every month I tried to move it back towards the top of the priority list. But when the rest of your life is spinning in circles, it's hard to convince yourself to do something that doesn't appear to move you forward. I did manage to run more than 10 miles in the year and do a few push ups and sit ups though. I'm not sure you can call that progress, but at least I didn't create a mold of myself on the couch...



6. Improve my cooking skills - FAIL

The goal - To be able to consistently cook about 20 things and maybe add in 2 really hard impressive things so I can pretend I know what I'm doing if I ever have super important company, like at the holidays.

The result - I never really pulled out any recipes or tried to cook anything difficult. I did experiment with different spices and such though. I never really had company to impress, so that probably didn't help. But still, nothing new coming out of my kitchen yet. More creative, yes. New, no. I guess we'll call it progress though. At least I have more options for breakfast than cereal now.



7. Keep In Contact With Friends and Family - Um... Sure. Let's call it DONE

The goal - Get a list of contacts, and maybe start a Birthday Calendar and send cards.

The result - Thanks to Google, I finally have all of my contacts in one place. Only problem is that there are a ton of duplicates on the list. I guess importing lists from different sites and just dumping them together will do that. So I have half of a calendar with dates pulled from Facebook. Maybe by this year I'll get it organized enough to be able to send Christmas cards. Or at least Christmas emails...



8. Start 52 Good Habits - DONE

The goal - Establish 52 good habits.

The result - About halfway through the year I lowered the goal to 12. I got pretty good with about 10 of them. So yay for me! 1 - For realizing that I couldn't accomplish the original goal and changing it instead of giving up. And 2 - For actually keeping up with it.



9. Read The Whole Bible - FAIL

The goal - Gee. I wonder. What could it be?

The result - So maybe I should have eased into this one. For someone who doesn't read everyday, the first plan should not be to read the Bible in 90 days. Over a year, sure. 90 Days, not so much. So I failed. Not as miserably as I could have, but I did.



10. Move To A New City - DONE

The goal - Move.

The result - Success. I don't live by myself, but I don't live in suburbia anymore either.


So the grand total is...
DONE - 5
1/2 DONE - 1
FAIL - 4

Not too bad I guess. I mean, It's not like I'm being graded or anything. And even if I was, I don't think 55% is failing at life. To me you can only fail at life if you don't live it. And it's no longer last year. It's this year. So I've lived an entire year. I've moved forward. That has to count for something right?

I've made some goals for this year already. But since it's Saturday, I think I'll enjoy my weekend a little before I get to work improving my life or learning new things again. There will still be plenty of 2011 left next week. Until then.... Happy No Longer Last Year!!!!

15 Minute Decluttering Part III

So apparently my room was never actually cleaned out and is pretty much a visual record of middle school and high school for me.

Random stuff I found while decluttering includes...
- a nanopet and a gigapet (amazingly i did not find a tomagatchi *insert sad face here*)
- a set of cds backing up my music collection from the days before affordable external hard drives
- 3 1/2" floppy discs containing who knows what (a few were actually games, but 1 - i don't even know if i own an external floppy drive, 2 - computers don't come with those standard anymore, and 3 - even if they did, who really runs DOS or remembers the commands? - if you do, you can have the Looney Toons game i just found, i guess....)

Also, today I reached my goal of getting rid of 365 Things. I still have too much stuff. So.... NEW GOAL! The new goal is to get rid of 1000 Things before the year is out. If by some miracle I manage to get that done before October is over I'll bump it up to 2010 just to be festive. But for now, 1000 Things. This means a new goal thermometer. Maybe I'll change the color, make it say a percentage, we'll see. For now, I'm off to declutter some more. Maybe get through the random stack of papers that seems to keep growing on my desk now that it appears as if I've finally learned the difference between moving papers around and getting rid of them.

So Yeah, About that Trip....

I promised to post a little about the trip to the funeral in SC.

I don't really feel like going step by step so here are a few highlights.
My family is crazy. I know. But really, who's isn't?

- my cousin can read. this was discovered when my uncle had him read every road sign he could from philly till dc. from the back seat of the 12 passenger van. on the driver's side. well, when he wasn't asleep anyways. after all that's the seat with the best view right?

- even though we didn't pack the van, we should not put members of my family in that close of a proximity for that long of a period of time. people will always bother their siblings just because they can. and when they're adults they just know what will push your buttons even better. things get thrown and people get hit when someone won't shut up. the tenth time you tell them. at 4 in the morning.

- a 5 hour energy drink will indeed keep you awake when you get tired. it will also keep you so awake that you can drive from SC to MD without being able to fall asleep. it's not that you're not tired. you just can't fall asleep.

- people do not trust one of my uncles to drive on a road trip. because he was the first on asleep. stretched out on the front seat. and it was still daylight.

- my cousins love to instigate. ask questions to keep people talking when someone wants them to shut up. add another opinion so people can't decide between two choices. turn to a radio station with songs people like but don't know the words to so they sing their own words and you can laugh.

Anyways it was a good trip. Not something we can do everyday. And not something i think i want to do in a van anytime soon. Maybe if we had a bus or RV or at least something with a bit more leg room. Anyways, the mafia had a great few days and then returned in time to rest up before the church had the sunday school picnic on sunday. All in all, a good weekend.

15 Minute Decluttering Part II

So yeah, apparently you CAN do anything in 15 minutes. So far I've dumped 108 things.

Here's some stuff that managed to go away this week using only 15 minutes at a time.

- A bunch of old notebooks from high school and college (stuff I'm never going to read again)
- Tons of random receipts for stuff I ate and therefor can never return (who keeps these?)
- A complete series of little kid books (I can read good now so I don't need tiny word books)
- Computer programs that some of my friends need that I don't use anymore
- Costume jewelry that I never wore that came free with something someone bought
- TONS of random fliers for events that happened already

And this is making my room look sooooo much better. There isn't really a before picture so I can't really show you the difference, but let's just put it this way, if I keep up with this I could kill my goal of getting rid of 365 things in less than a month. And I thought it would take all year. So my new goal is not to list each of the 365 things. I think that was part of why I wasn't getting rid of anything. It's a lot harder to keep track of what I get rid of than it is to just get rid of it. So the new goal is to do a 15 minute declutter session everyday for at least a month. There are 4 full months left before the year is over. If I can do 15 minutes for at least half of those days there is no way I'll get rid of less than 365 things. Even if I only got rid of 5 things every time it wouldn't take me that long. Plus I still have crap from elementary school still sitting around in my room. So 365 things is not going to be an issue. I have one more thing on my good habits list, and I'll end up with a MUCH cleaner space. Now I just have to figure out where to attack next. Maybe in my closet, cause clearly that is still a hopeless space...

I'll be in South Carolina for another family funeral later this week, so it doesn't look like my count is going to jump much before the week is over. I think I may just take a break when I get back and pick up on Monday. If I feel really motivated before I leave I may go at the bookshelves again though. Those are pretty easy since I'm not going to read most of that stuff ever again.
Anyways, Monday will be super update date I guess. Funeral stories and decluttering progress should make for an interesting post or two.

15 Minute Decluttering

To weeks later and I'm up to 7 Habits. It looks like this is going to go a lot better than I thought it would. I found this website called FlyLady.net. Pretty much it's a site dedicated to pulling your life together by cleaning. The general idea is that if you start in any area of your home and get rid of stuff you don't need, clear clutter from the areas that seem to breed it, and create small daily routines and habits you will eventually be able to have a clean, organized house. And by having a clean and organized house, you will be calmer, less stressed, more organized, etc. And all of that will help to clear your brain to think about what super interesting, creative stuff and free your time to do stuff other than clean, worry, and trying to remember stuff you should have written down. I really suggest checking out the site. Even if you don't agree with everything she says, you'll see that the system she uses makes sense.

So i stole an idea that I saw on there and also on a few other productivity websites (funny how these guys all think alike isn't it?) and I started to separate my day into sections and group my habits by what needs to happen in those sections. Now I have a morning routine, an afternoon routine and a night routine. 3 lists of habits that need to be done by a certain point in the day.

So now that I've gotten through some of the basic habits that help me get my morning going and one of the nightly habits that makes my mornings easier I'm going to move onto another habit. One that should help me accomplish one of my other goals. That really was the point of adding new habits in the first place after all. (It's easier to accomplish a goal if you can break it down into a daily habit and just focus on that every day)

Anyways, this week's habit is something I picked up off of the FlyLady website.

I'm not doing everything just yet. I'm mainly taking one of the ideas and adding it to my daily routine. 15 minute decluttering sessions. One of the most used quotes on the FlyLady site is "You can do anything for 15 minutes" So this week me and my trusty timer will be on a quest to see just how many things I can check off of my 365 Things list for this year using only 15 minutes at a time. I'm adding new Goals page to the site so you can follow along with my progress. Even if I don't post I'll be checking off my habits in Joe's Goals and updating my 365 Things progress bar which I'm going to reset to zero for the purposes of this 15 minute experiment. I guess we'll see what happens. Anyways, keep checking the Goals page to see how I do, and look for another post later this week with an update.

Establishing Habits

So this habits thing is getting to me. I've been back to reading blogs again lately and everybody seems to have a list of things you're supposed to do to get yourself together.

Healthy Habit Changes
10 Morning Habits
7 Habits of Highly Happy People
21 Habits of Happy People
50 Habits of Highly Successful People

The best thing that I can think of for me is something that I keep seeing on multiple sites. Having a morning or nightly routine, or both. So this is what I'm going to spend most of my habit real estate on. I'm going to build a morning routine and a night routine, drink water, and exercise. Thank should take care of most of the 20 habits. The only thing left to do is to keep track of how well I do with each habit.

So there are two types of habits I'm trying to track, "yes/no" habits and "how much" habits. Yes/No habits, for example, are either completed or they are not. I either got 6 or more hours of sleep or I didn't. I either worked out or I didn't. How Much habits are a little more interesting. Today I ran 2 miles, yesterday I ran 1 mile, tomorrow I will run 2.5 miles. How you choose to measure your goals depends only on you. When I first started running I only recorded if I ran or not. The more I ran, the more I kept track of other information for each run.

There are a bunch of different ways to keep track of habit info. I'm using these ones. They're all digital, so I don't have to worry about where I wrote stuff down. That's always been a problem for me before. Out of sight really does mean out of mind sometimes.

Yes/No Habits
Joes Goals - lets me add individual habits and check them off when you do them each day. it keeps track of how many habits I did in one day and how many days in a row I did (or skipped) a certain habit

How Much Habits
Daytum - lets me add items to do and quantities for each item. also makes graphs for when, how much, or what I did

Nike+ - I could really just use Daytum to keep track of when and how far I run, but this is sooo much more fun. it lets me interact with other people, set goals for myself (miles run, calories burned, speed) and challenge other runners. Things like this are for when you already keep track of basic information and want to try a little something extra (or just like the extra incentive - message boards are a great accountability tool)

You can also make your own checklists and graphs on the computer or by hand and use those to track your progress. Some of my favorite graphs have been ones I colored on graph paper in school. But for now I'm gonna use these. They work. Joe's Goals is programed to come up every time I get on the internet. Can't get much more of a reminder than that now can I?

Setting Goals

So a bunch of months ago I started with this whole rant about how i hated certain parts of my life and really wanted to change them. Then i started a whole set of blog posts about what i wanted to change, and why. But i made a huge mistake. I never really sat down and thought about HOW I was going to change anything. So now several months have gone by, and just by writing my goal ideas down I've made progress. But not nearly as much as I could have.

Time to start over.

No excuses. No trying to fix everything at once. No trying to catch up. I'm just going to start where I am and pick one of my goals to focus on. So from the previous posts that I've made on this topic, here we go.....

Before I pick which of my ten goals to get started on again, there are two types of goals that I want to talk about. Smart goals and dumb goals. Not good goals and bad goals, there is no such thing as a bad goal - unless your goal is to kill someone, then, not so good.

Smart Goals

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

Dumb Goals
Dangerously Unattainable, Monstrously Big goals

The point is that there are two things that will push you to accomplish what you want. A plan, and your ego. Smart goals help you by making sure you have a plan. There is a specific thing to accomplish, a measurable way to tell when you're done, you've proved that it's not impossible, you have a reason to do it, and you know when you want to have it done by. This keeps you from not knowing where to start, getting overwhelmed, wasting your time on useless work, dragging your heels, etc.

Dumb Goals on the other had play merely to your ego. Who doesn't want to say they were great enough to triple their income in 6 months all while quitting their day job to start their own business in a new city in a field they knew nothing about before they started. Some would say that's dumb, others would say it's adventurous. These are the goals that push us to our limits and help us strive not to accomplish but to over-achieve.

You can read more about Smart Goals and Dumb Goals here.

So now back to my goals again. I'm going to pick a SMART goal to get started. There are a few DUMB goals that are hanging around on my bucket list, but that's another post entirely.

For now I think I'm going to get back to my goal of starting new habits. Originally the intention was to start 52 good habits by the end of the year. Now that it's almost August that's not so achievable, so I'm gonna make it 20 habits. I have 4 that I do already, so that just leaves 16 more to come up with between now and December. I think that's a bit more doable than still aiming for the 52 with less than half the year left.

If you wanna get on the goal setting bandwagon with me, here are a few sites to help you figure out what goals to go for
Achieve your goals by putting them online
How to stay committed to long term goals
How to choose the right goals for you
How to set deadlines

In one of the next posts I'll get a little deeper into what kind of habits I'm going to be adding as a part of my goal, how I'm keeping track of my progress and why I'm adding habits to my life in the first place. Hopefully I can stay focused this time...

Where in the World is.....

And now I've got the Carmen SanDiego theme song stuck in your head.
Mission Accomplished!!!

The real question is where am I? Or, more or less, where have I been.

I skipped May. In June I let you know that I wasn't dead. And now it's July. The END of July.

I honestly have no idea. I think the theme of this blog finally caught up with me. So here's the whole story, or most of it anyways.



For as long as I can remember, I have always been a person who was easily entertained and just as easily distracted. I've been interested in everything from swimming, track and field hockey, to piano, saxophone and clarinet, to Windows, OSX, and DOS to cats, dogs, and fish, to Spanish, French and Japanese to - well, you get the point. Just about everything. And sometimes all at once. There were very few things I didn't like, and it was very easy to figure out what they were. But the list was super short and still is. I am not a fan of strawberries, tomatoes, scary movies or roller coasters.

Anyways - now I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere. Where nothing ever happens. Without most of my friends. With all of this running through my brain.

So where have I been? I've been trying to figure out what gets to stay and what needs to leave my life. Maybe then I'll be able to make something interesting of this blog, or my life in general. Cause right now, I'm kinda a real Renaissance Polymath. Interested in everything, Good at most things, and as focused as a Goldfish.

I'm Not Dead

Not Dead.


That would be my entire message to people when it looked like maybe i fell off the face of the earth for any given point in time during college. So i guess i'm not through the falling off the earth phase yet.

Anyways. I'm not dead. Not yet at least. I've done little more than color on walls with little kids in Sunday school. But i guess i'm doing something right cause they think i'm responsible enough to be in charge of little kids.

anyways, i'm gonna go be not dead some more... I'll be back eventually.

Focus

So I'm slowly getting my focus back. It's amazing how sometimes having one conversation can change your whole perspective. Even if the conversation isn't about you or specifically to help you, it can. So now I'm off to get some stuff done and get pumped and focused again so I have something to write about again.