Chris’ Blog

Tonight I was thinking about the word “Tomorrow”. It started because I was going to set some goals for tomorrow. Get up early (4:45am) and get to work being the main one so far. This isn’t going to be easy as its currently 11:30PM… But Tomorrow - there is that word again - is a very busy day, and I need to get up and get going. I have come to find that when I have very busy days, if I get up and seriously get something accomplished in the morning, I have so much more of an effective day. And man do I need effective now! My wife had a kidney stone removed over the weekend and with visits to the doctor and hospital taking up a good portion of the end of the week and the weekend I’m behind at work and in getting things done around the house! So, back to tomorrow - as tomorrow never comes, its not good to say I’ll do it tomorrow, except thats what we do when we are setting goals for the next day. So I wonder if saying I’ll do something tomorrow is not a good idea as it may lead to a procrastination habit. My question then is should I not set goals the night before? I have found that if I have a concrete set of goals the night before I am more likely to get up in the morning than if I just say I’ll get up and get to work - but maybe I should look into finding another solution. For now though, tomorrow is becoming today and I need to get to sleep!

Problems are much easier to solve if you know what the problem is! Tonight I spent a half hour digging out the door frame to our bedroom when the door knob goes in past the plate. It has never latched, and we finally got to a point where shutting our door to keep Jayden out of our stuff would be great. So I finally got to it. I kept digging, putting the plate back on, digging more… so frustraited that it wasn’t working… “IT SHOULD BE WORKING!” was all I could keep thinking. There was no way it needed to be back out that far to close… Turned out that the hole wasn’t too far in, it was too far DOWN! As soon as I noticed that - I measured the height it needed to be, and my now bigger hole was plenty big enough - and boom plate went on, and door closes no problem. Its usually a good idea to step back and look at the problem again if you don’t seem to be getting anywhere. Maybe there is a simple solution you just haven’t seen yet!

    When you are trying to attain a goal, whether it be a one time goal, or establishing a habit, your successes and failures are bound to look like a roller-coaster. Some days or weeks (maybe even months) will seem to be getting better and better, and then sometimes you will hit one of those steep downward slopes where your heart is in your throat and you can’t even scream your going so fast. Then, eventually you even out and you can start the climb back up. The trick is to make the downward slopes as short/small as possible, and to overall have an upward moving ride.
    I had a bit of experience with this the last two days I thought I would share. Yesterday, when I woke up, I could see it was light outside and I thought - Oh good, its morning and its beautiful. I then promptly fell back asleep. Hey, I think that is a small success because I thought how nice it was in the morning, even if I went back to sleep. Today however I didn’t want to get up at all. I know that this is because I stayed up WAY later than I should have last night. I didn’t want to run, and didn’t get up to do so. When I did get up at 7 I had two options. Feel bad that I didn’t go running at 5:30 and try to get myself out to run, or just move on and come in to work. I picked to move on. Coming in to work later would have made my whole day seem a ton longer, and I would have been in a crummy mood. This way I get right to work - look past the mistake, and get back to what I should be doing. I will still go running this evening (about 2 miles I think), and then tomorrow I will run again.
    One problem we can face as we hit the downward slopes is that we get discouraged. This only allows us to slope down even quicker. Although missing the opportunity, or failing in some way is not good, being too negatively effected by it is actually counter productive to our overall goal as it can lead us even further away from where we want to be. When you hit a rough patch, think “Well, I could have handled that a bit better.” and MOVE ON. You can’t change it, you can only change how you react to similar situations in the future. If you want to be able to achieve hard things in life, you have to be willing to let go of the mistakes (big or small) and celebrate any successes as you get them.

    I will be one of the first to tell you how important it is to set goals. I have seen goals do some miraculous things in my life. However, in writing my last post I realized that sometimes things are much easier on paper than we think. For instance, at the New Year I decided that I wanted to train to run a marathon. I didn’t really think much of it, I just had run in High School, I had heard of some other people being able to do it, and I decided some day it was something I wanted to do. Well then a few weeks ago I was suddenly hit with the urge to set a goal to run a marathon. So I looked up what marathons are in Utah, and when, and decided the Salt Lake City Marathon in April of next year would be a good target. It seemed realistic at the time. I even took it a step further and found a half-marathon here in Spanish Fork that I can run in September. I decided that I could do that. “Its only 13.1 miles,” I told myself, “besides I ran that much for practices in high school sometimes.” I am now going to point out some things about these goals and see if we can diagnose what was good and what needed some work.
    One thing I didn’t think about was how long it had been since I really ran. Yeah, I had done a couple of mile runs - but thats no half-marathon! I also didn’t take into consideration how much time it takes to practice and build endurance to be able to run that far. For instance, I started running every other day - thinking this would give me enough time to get into shape. What I have found, is that after a few weeks instead of being dead after just under a mile, I am dead at 3 miles. I need to increase my endurance a TON before I am ready to run that 13 miles.
    Another thing that has come to my attention is that I have a desire to do this. Enough of a desire that I put my goal out where the public “could” see it, and made my goal known to those around me. However, when my alarm goes off in the morning and I haven’t had enough sleep (or even if I have…) I don’t (yet?) hear myself say - “Good morning world! I want to run!”
    The final thing I didn’t do was sit down and write up a full plan. I got as far as run every other day so that I am able to run 13 miles by September. Is that really measurable? Its time-bound, but not measurable as I have been running and only increasing miles when I set myself a goal of “Tomorrow I am going to run X”.
    So were these goals unrealistic? I don’t think so. I have come leaps and bounds and I am going to run that race on Sept. 6th. Will it be easy to get there? - No. Will I have to start running every day? - Yes. Will I have to set specific milestones of where I want my fitness level so that I am ready in time? - Yes. Can I do this? - YES! I have been keeping to my goals that I set - they just weren’t specific enough. The plan was mostly thought through - not quite all the way, but I think I caught it with enough time that I can get this all figured out! I hope you can find points here that will help with your goal setting. Remember, think through the whole picture. Try to actually envision the work that will go into meeting that goal, not just the feeling of accomplishing it. And set out specific milestones so that you keep on track and can achieve it. And Good Luck!

So what do you do when life just runs away from you?  I thought after I graduated things would settle down… but it seems the opposite happened!  I think what it happened is that I felt like I should have more time to do things, so I got these ideas of catching up on all of my projects, and I have been so overwhelmed by everything else going on!  It’s been crazy!  So, I decided that stress comes from not living  up to the expectations that you set for yourself…  So I am going to take a few  minutes now, and set some expectations for tomorrow - super simple things - just 3 of them that I can do to get better.

One will be something for work - probably a bigger thing with subparts - I am going to get the tracking portion of the registration system working (including viewing the reports of users individual information - even if just basic.)

Two will be something for my family - I will make dinner tomorrow, and do the dishes.

The third will be something for me - I have a meeting at 6 that I would like to attend.  I’m hoping it only takes an hour, but it could be two.

Those are my expectations and goals for tomorrow.  Now the next part of a S.M.A.R.T. goal is to set ways in which I will accomplish them - I think the best thing that I can do to get these things finished is to get up and get into work early so I have time before my meeting to get things done.  I also need to read some tomorrow, so although this will not be easy, I need to get up on time tomorrow morning, read my book and get ready, and then head into work.  This will provide me the ability to get started early before all the distractions of work so that I can get that task done, and it will give me a chance to get home with time to make dinner and do the dishes before I leave.   I’m going to use this blog for a little while as a place to set expectations of myself, and to follow through with them.   Thanks for the support!

As I hoped, this week has already been more effective than the whole first part of February! While taking a break today I was pointed to this article by Chris Brogan. It is some great advice on cutting back on things that aren’t as important. I’ve been thinking a lot about this the last couple of days and about where I’m going to have to make cuts to get everything done. I’ve heard it said that we almost always try to fill our day with at least one more thing than we think we can do. So sometimes it is a good idea to figure out what we want to do, and then take one thing away from that list.

Alright, today was pretty good. I actually managed to get some things done. You know how did it? I knew today was a day off, and anything I got done was a bonus. So I just set out to get a couple of things done. I focused on getting them done, and now it means that tomorrow I don’t have to spend time doing those things and I can work on things that aren’t due tomorrow but are to be done for the next couple of days. Lets take it one day at a time - just a few things each day, and we will get back in the habits I was in previously! Tomorrow I get up at 6! Back to the grind!

Ok, they are still a work in progress, but I wanted to give a basic description of what I have put together as my routines, and give a brief report on how it is working. (These ideas come as a compilation of ideas form others most of which I cannot take credit for.)

Mornings
The mornings are pretty simple. Wake up, exercise (which for now consists of sit-ups), Breakfast, Shower, Do some reading, And then comes the most important part - I create a todo list from my online “master list”. This list contains all of my projects, schoolwork, and assignments in general. I pull from this list the items that have to be done that day. The idea is that hopefully it is only a few. If it is just a few and I have the possibility of extra time, I pick a few others I would like to do, or things for tomorrow that with time I would like to get done early. This list is compiled on an index card that I can carry around with me all day. On the back of the index card is a space for notes throughout the day. I then go through my day hoping to cross everything off the card.

Evenings
At the end of the day my hope is to review the things I got done, and in essence check them back in and not think about them through the night. This will leave my mind to concentrate on the important things and not the everyday tasks while I sleep. This review will consist of checking off the items that I finished on my todo list (If they didn’t get finished at least marking my progress.) The next step is to take the notes off of the back of the card and creating any todo items that these require. I then can recycle that card and start over in the morning.

As I mentioned before, these routines aren’t quite perfect yet - well really my implementation of them isn’t perfect is what the problem is… I have been getting up early, but I haven’t been super diligent in making daily todo lists. It can take a lot to get a master todo list created and I’m hoping that it’ll be worth it to keep everything in line.

Well this week has been a bit crazy, but there have been a few lessons that I learned that I would like to share.

1. Sometimes you need to take time for yourself. Some days you need to not try to see how much work you can get done. Sometimes it is just important to relax and take a day off. Read, watch some TV, or just spend some extra time with those you love. Enjoy your days, and if you are getting too caught up with life take a day, or part of a day, even a few hours, off. It will do you some good.

2. Don’t become lazy. Now the last piece of advice was to take some time off. Don’t let that “some time” turn into more than one day, or a few hours (whatever you have set).

3. Get back to work! If you take too much time off, you will find that it is so easy to waste your days away and not feel like you are getting anything done. You then might want to waste even more time. It can become a productivity downward spiral that is hard to break out of. The easiest way to get out of it is to just buckle down and get something done.

The morning routine worked great today! I got up, got out of my room, and got things done before I even met with my project group at 9. I had things done before 9:00 on a Saturday morning! Wow did that feel good. I AM tired now and its getting close to 10 so that’s great! Just finishing a few things up and I’ll head to bed! The system isn’t perfect yet, but I’ll report on progress and what is working in the next couple of days! Oh, by the way, I’ve been doing pretty good with my goals from New Years - I haven’t given up. I’ve probably only gotten them 2/3 or 3/4 of the time (all of them that is…) but I think that is really good. One thing Leo wrote about once was never letting yourself miss a goal two days in a row. I’m trying to do that. Oh, and when I think of something I need to do, doing it right then. Maybe this all needs to be put in a coherent post that could be followed… That would be a good idea I guess…