Letter #38 - Plan For Your Goals

So I've spent the week, having a fresh start and organising the things in my life that needed organising and after seeing just how many other posts there were relating to New Year's resolutions, I thought I'd wait a while and approach it a little differently. 

First of all, I hope everyone had a good holiday and new year. So I know it can be a touchy topic when I say it's a new year and time for a fresh start. The cynics among you will ask, "why now? If you wanted to start fresh, why was September not good enough, or October 23rd? Why does the new year require change?" In short, it doesn't. You can start with a new idea or lifestyle or any other alteration you need to make, whenever you want to, but there is something sweet and rounded about the first day of the year. It gives a solid starting point. It's like when you're procrastinating and you think to yourself that you'll get to your homework at 5pm and then before you notice is 5.24pm, so now you have to wait until 5.30pm or 6pm before you start. Because it just feels right. That's all it comes down to. A feeling.  

If that feeling is that you're going to have a fantastic year, then by all means, go ahead.

So I debated whether or not to talk about resolutions in general or my personal resolutions. I decided on the latter. I have a lot of goals for each year and I very rarely meet them all but I give it my best shot. This year, however, I really do feel that this is it. I'm going to smash this year and feel amazing about it. The reason I know this is because while every other year I set vague resolutions that I had no set plan to accomplishing, other the last year, I've learnt about goal setting and the preparation that goes into any task with a goal.

I mean, you wouldn't just jump in and attempt a 10,000 word essay, without a plan, right? (Okay, that's a bad example... I actually have done that and it turned out great haha). Either way, the majority of tasks require preparation of some sort before we can undertake the commitment.

Say that you wanted to go to the gym more. One, that's a vague goal to begin with. How do you quantify "more"? And two, you can make excuses far too easily. You don't have the right gym top, you need a new sports bra, the gym simply isn't cost effective right now... the list can go on and on and before you know it, it's June and you haven't even taken one step in the right direction.

So as I said, I'll name a few of my goals, simply as a way of holding myself accountable. I've already had my goals written my bullet journal since the 1st of the the month and now I'm using this post as a means of accountability while also drilling it further into my own mind. I always set learning goals, and they are important to me but this is the first year in a while where I'm not in education so I can choose to prioritise the things I want to learn. By the end of 2017, I am hoping to be fluent in Spanish, have a basic grasp of Italian, take a certificated sign language course and to understand the basics of coding. These are not things that I decided on a whim and I took my time, researching each of them because as I said before, preparation is key.

I've always loved languages and I did study Spanish to A-level but let it all get forgotten after that. So when it comes to learning Spanish and Italian, I am going to use Duolingo. 

This is an app that's been around for a couple of year and I've had it downloaded on my phone pretty much as soon as it was a developed application. The great thing about it is that it's free. If you want to try a language and you're not too sure whether it's for you, there's no harm in trailing an app that costs you nothing. It caters for a broad range of languages, and it starts of very simply. It uses repetition and audio and even tests your pronunciation as you get further into the lessons. The app is advertised as needing just 5 minutes a day, and that is absolutely all you need. It also gives it the option to set a notification so that it can remind you once a day and I really do love that feature. 

So this isn't a new app to me and I do know that I love it and the way that it helps you step by step but I also know that sometimes I get lazy once I'm in a routine. So this time, I'm keeping a notebook for all my new vocabulary and the gendered nouns so that I can feel as though I've taken a more active role in my learning. Five minutes a day for a year is just over 30 hours of study. That is minuscule in the grand scheme of things but it's still something that most people could find time for.

The coding is again, something I've loved from afar. I'm always so in awe of all you can accomplish with knowledge and as we travel further into a technologically aware society, I feel like I need to understand the basics for myself. Honestly, I just hate feeling like I've missed out and for me FOMO is never more real than when I feel I don't have a piece of knowledge that I should have. 

For this, I've found so many online learning systems and it is going to take some trial and error before I can feel confident that I've doing it right. I've subscribed to a programme called Skillscrush as just one way of introducing this topic to myself. There's also codecademy and Khan academy that claim to have great teaching resources for my needs. I think this is something that will take much more time and focus and for now, I'm setting that out as one day a week, for as many hours as I can stomach.

Lastly, a learning goal that I have wanted to achieve for so long is to learn British sign language. With a brother who has had to use signing systems as he grew up and a mother who worked in a special school, I've been around the practice of communication through signing for most of my life. But I've always wanted to actually learn the basics and more if I can. I think it could be an invaluable skill and even if it isn't, and I never have to use it, I think it casts an awareness of how other people have to live their lives and that's too important of a lesson to pass up. 

For this goal, I didn't want to be left on my own and to end up doing it wrong. So I've found classes that I can take in my area and I hope to be able to gain some kind of certification for the learning that I will do other that time. Again, this is just something I want to do for myself, to prove that I can and because I think it should be common practice, in the same way that first aid skills now are.

Anyway, those are just a small handful of my goals for this year. What are some your goals and how do you plan to achieve them? (I'm only really asking because I love getting new ideas that I ucan use myself!) 

Until next time, be inspired...

Love, Z

Letter #37 - Start a bullet journal with me

To anyone who has ever wished to be more organised,

I got sucked into the amazing feat that is a bullet journal. I've been interested in the idea of the journal after seeing it pop up on my Pinterest and Instagram feeds over the last year but I love notebooks too much to stick to just one. However, I think everyone should at least try this method. I wanted to start it with the new year, in hopes of beginning the year, with my best foot forward, but I also wanted to make sure that this wasn't a fad that I would get bored of after a few weeks.

So, I actually started this process at the beginning of December to see how it would be and if it would be something that I stuck to. Let me go back a few steps and explain how I am with planners. Simply put, I forget about them. Even back in school, when you would have a homework planner, I would either not write anything in it, or just forget to ever check it. This makes it sound like I was an awful student, I'm sure, but generally, if something is timetabled in for me, I will remember it. I mean, I survived school, sixth form and university, using just my memory for deadlines. But I have always wanted to be one of those cool, put together people, who can just flip open their diaries and their entire lives are planned out perfectly. They know where they need to be and what they have to do and life is a breeze.

Now, I have no fantasies or expectations of being one of those people. I like the chaos of being 'disorganised'. For me, I can find what I need in the mess, and it works for me. I do, however, want to tap into my potential for productivity. I can be super focused and on task as long as I know that that task has been planned for.

I have so many projects in the pipelines for this next year and I wanted to make sure that they didn't just remain in the pipelines, forgotten and rotting, because I didn't write it all down and the passion wilted away.

I'm not at all an expert on organisation and what I know about bullet journals is information that I have googled and read about from various blogs and YouTube tutorials to get to this point. I also don't use it the way it was probably intended. So as a disclaimer, this is simply my take on a bullet journal and you should check out bulletjournal.com for the original creator's thoughts on these journals.

Anyway, back to my attempt. I read up a lot and fell down the rabbit hole that is Pinterest for hours before I got cracking and actually got anything written down. 

Firstly, get a notebook. I always need lined paper in order to write anything that isn't floating off the page but for more freedom with the pages, I wanted a dotted notebook for easier customisation. I know that the Leichtturn 1917 is a very popular choice of journal and I will admit that I was tempted to get one but for as sleek as it looks, I didn't really want this to be a task of great expense, especially if I wasn't sure I'd stick with it. I shopped around and found a perfect dotted spiral-bound notebook in Muji for a much more reasonable price of £4 and the pages are thick enough that I can write on both sides, even with markers and it doesn't bleed. Spiral bound was important to me because as a leftie, I write at an angle and it's much easier to fold back the pages of a spiral notebook than a traditionally bound one, with stiffer edges. Another great thing about spiral bound is that if I really mess up a page and it bothers me, I can tear it out neatly and that's that. For now, it suits my needs and when it doesn't anymore, I'll change it up.

Next thing to note is that online there are so many beautiful examples of bullet journals that make my soul happy but that I could never recreate. And nor should I. I'm not an artist and my creativity stems from words, not illustrations so if you feel like your journal doesn't live up to others examples, just remember that it's yours to customise as you wish and that can mean keeping it minimal and neat if that's what you'd prefer. I keep a few coloured pens with me all the time so that I can just switch colours if I get a bit bored and that's enough for me.

Now, for the actual layout of this thing. I have to say that I wasn't very strict with myself because I wasn't sure what I would need at the beginning. What I did learn is that less is more. If you start with it as a simple planner and then add collections or extra pages for specific notes as you go, that might work best for you. 

For me, I left a page for the index but I didn't feel that I needed a key like most bullet journals contain, simply because I would know what I was writing and what it meant. 

I started with a monthly calendar, just because I liked seeing what day corresponded with each date. I also added some goals for the month that I thought were achievable. The problem was that I didn't need to check the monthly overview enough to remind myself of those goals and so I didn't achieve any of them to the degree that I wanted.

The next page was my favourite and I will absolutely continue it throughout the year. It's a habit tracker. I wrote out things that I wanted or needed to do every day and then I coloured in the corresponding box if I completed it. It was a good way for me to see what I was doing well and what I struggled with. (Ignore the blank spaces in the middle of the month. I got really ill for a couple of weeks)

From there, I didn't want to overcomplicate it so I simply created weekly spreads, only drawing out one week at a time. This worked for me because I have a much more relaxed schedule at present and most of the things I have to complete each day are personal and so this journal was really just for me, not for tracking appointments and meetings. Again, I customised it to what was important for me. I kept one half of each day for recording my food intake and also whether or not I prayed that day. I wasn't too strict with whether I completed tasks on time as this was just a trial run for me but in the new year I definitely will follow through a bit more.

The final page of my December trial was a brain dump page as I didn't have much on since it was the holidays and I didn't need to follow a strict weekly plan so I just wrote down anything that felt relevant or that had happened during the day. I think I'm definitely going to keep a few pages free each month for this purpose of just dumping my brain on paper. 

Like I said, I kept it simple so as not to overwhelm myself. I've added an end of year review page, that I will fill out now, as the year is ended. And then I've drawn out a 2017 quote page and created a goals for 2017 page. It's not really a resolution page as I want the goals to be achievable and attainable. I'm going to keep the rest of it up as I have done in this month. I might add some more pages to track specific things and if I do, I might write another quick post about my new year changes.

But for now, this post has already gotten too long and for that, I apologise! For something that's supposed to streamline your life, I sure have rambled far too much. I hope this motivates some of you to maybe give this method a try and if you do, or if you already keep a bullet journal and have any tips, let me know.

Until next time, be inspired...

Love, Z