Twenty Eight Days of Change-Planning

After a week of focusing on the good the bad and the ugly of my life I took the past seven days to plan. I took all those post it notes that were things I need to keep up with and I put them together. The first thing I did was budgeted my time. Wait you didn’t do your financial budget first? NOPE. To me time is more important because the time you have or don’t have can cost you money. For me I have to work a day job to pay the bills and I have my craft business on the side and I am trying to start a consulting firm to replace my day job. I can’t afford to know budget my time. When I lose track of time I lose money, I lose momentum and I can’t have that. So I sat down and wrote out my day, my week, my month. I wrote down all the little things I had to do, that I wanted to do and things I really shouldn’t be doing. Then I looked at how I could do them smarter. Instead of going to the grocery store every night. I started to use the shop and click options at stores. Some you pay for but it was worth it as I saved time. I am making a chore list for the girl child, so I don’t have to clean up her messes. I looked at commuting options so that instead of driving every day I can ride and craft, see where I am going with this? Once I had my time budgeted I could do my financial budget. It was actually scary given I am making almost half of what I was once was. But I crunched the numbers and I got everything to work out. No more lattes and fancy cheese for a while but it will all be worth it to reach my goals. I even budgeted my goals. Just like when you are on a diet you break that down in smaller increments so you feel successful with every step. I did this with my goals in post it notes of course. Yes one does say “buy fancy cheese again” but that is what goals are for right?

28 Days of Change- Focus

About three days into this twenty-eight-day adventure some things happened in my world that were rather unexpected. I didn’t want to stop what I was doing I just had to take a new approach on it. So I took five days to focus. Luckily the assignment I am currently working I have more than a little free time to take think time. Not everyone has that luxury and honestly I wish I didn’t right now but I am grateful for it. The first thing I needed to focus on was my situation and what were all the things I could do right now to keep me from freaking out about it. So I took a five mile walk and thought about what little good panicking was going to do me. And then I thought about options and solutions. And when I got home I wrote down my thoughts and made a to do list but made sure it wasn’t one list it was broken into smaller “doable” lists. So I used a stack of post it notes and put five items from my master list on each post it and enough room for notes if I needed to take further action on each task. I was able to complete fifteen tasks in my pj’s on a Monday evening and it lifted about twenty-five pounds off my shoulders. The next day I took care of a few more items and some had follow up steps so I moved those aside and pushed on and created a few more post it notes for other items I needed to focus on when I got to a point I could do that. I am now focusing on what I want to be when I grow up. I am thankful for the time at temp assignments because I am getting a feel for different office environments and looking at my skill set and what I have to offer and what I need to work on. I have applied for and interviewed for a few jobs I would have loved to have but didn’t but I was able to start to see why I didn’t get them. It’s so easy just to apply for every job out of desperation without actually looking at the job description and looking into the company. So I made some more lists. What do I want to do, what am I able to do, what are my strengths and weakness since that seems to be in every interview, and what atmosphere do I want to work in? I read a job description today where I had 90% of what they wanted but the 10% I didn’t wasn’t kind of key to what they were looking. I asked myself is this something I could learn and wanted to learn and express that to them in a cover letter? Once I did more research on the company I realized that it wasn’t really a place I would want to take money to learn that skill for. Did she just say that in her situation? Yes, yes I did. Again it goes back to applying for everything out of desperation. And it comes back down to focus. As I am closing down on my five days of focus I do feel more grounded and although I still have a lot of major work to do on my to do lists I think I have a good plan moving forward. And on another note seven days into this I have lost 3 lbs and cut down on my cheese intake. The dairy industry may take a hit this twenty-eight days. But 3M stock will be up from all the Post It Notes.