January Focus Recap

This was the month of AutoFocus - schedules, systems and making my life easier through planning. I was also focusing on three key ideas. This is how they panned out. 

• Taking cues from my body - January has been pretty kick ass for work projects. We hosted our huge Main Street 5th Annual Company Picnic with over 250 people attending on the 31st and the prep for that is filled with tremendous details. I also developed projects for 3 other clients that are taking amazing shape. So, work = creativity = excitement = long hours = not a lot of sleep. BUT this time I just flowed with it. If I was excited and wanted to get up at 5 to start working, I just did. If that meant a quick 20 minute power nap in the afternoon I did that. Instead of fighting how I was feeling I went with it, which was interesting. I ate better (we went gluten free mid month), I cut back on some caffeine and sugar, and I just started paying attention to how I felt. Mostly, that felt great.
• Remembering that it is all practice - It was freeing to give myself grace in times I didn't feel I was doing my best and allowing the next day to be a fresh start.
• Moving my body every single day - I hit this 21 days out of 31. I can do better!

Then the month was focused on schedules and planning. I did a lot of small project planning, but I didn't get to the big picture planning that I wanted to do. I just didn't make time for it. Except I did the 12 Intentions - one for each month and that actually seems to be working as some framework for planning my year.

I fought my to do list. Seriously. I have a rockin' to do list structure. I KNOW that it works when I do it, but about mid month I resisted using it. I was avoiding putting down all of the things I needed to do and was winging it. That was when I started to have some sleep problems because I was keeping too much in my head. As soon as I went back to keeping up with my paper to do list it all started clicking again. Go figure, follow my own advice and I win.

We planned our meals for the month and that made life really easy.

I designated Monday (or the first day that I leave my house in the week) as the day I get gas whether the tank was completely empty or not. 

I kept up with MyFitnessPal to keep track with my food and exercise 21 days out of the month.

I started to schedule things on the calendar that are me related and not work related - something I hadn't done before.

I downloaded the very best app ever! Leave Now - it syncs with your calendar and tells you when to leave for an appointment. It is the best time planning tool I have used to date. It knows how far your appointment is, how long it will take to get there and dings a reminder when you need to go. Extremely helpful when I am getting caught up in meetings and projects, but need to be somewhere else. Download it!

I have more planning I want to do, but basically it was a pretty focused and inspiring month of tackling how to manage my time and plan for the future. How was your January?

Comments

[Lyndi (nwafoodie)]

proud of you!