New Year's Resolution

My New Year's Resolution is to be better at time management. I have so many things that I want to do and cannot find the time for, whereas I do very little that I actually enjoy with the time I have. I determined, in getting a car, and thus more free time, that I should make the most of it. That I should use most of it. No more time wasting for me. That's my resolve.

This entails dozens of smaller goals.

I compare it to money management. If I had resolved to manage my money better, I would have started by making a budget, reviewing necessary expenses, typical uses of money and where I can save and what the savings should be used for. A budget leads to dozens of little goals: spend less on eating out (which leads to making food at home), save this much per month toward a new car, set up weekly transfers to my savings from my checking, etc.

The same it true for my time management goal. I started with a budget. Where does my time go? Is it necessary? Is there something of higher priority that ought to use that time instead? My little goals became daily scripture study, daily exercise, saving Wednesday evenings for writing only and reallocating the typical use of it to another evening, etc. I have a color-coded schedule of my ideal week, how I would use my time to perfectly reflect my goals were I to possess the self-discipline and no distractions--though, I did include room for unforeseen events.

The task looks impossible. I do not spend my time like that now. But I hope to be much closer by December of this year. That's the point: it's a goal not an immediate transformation. And like with a budget, I will not throw the whole thing out the window if I slip up and clean the kitchen tonight instead of writing. I will do better tomorrow.

As part of good goal setting, I have constructed a plan to meet this goal. I have selected a focus for each month, a sub-goal that I will dedicate my attention to fitting into place, even if the others slip a little. Hopefully, each month will build a habit that will continue to the next; but if not, I have selected only six focuses, so I will come back and repeat the experience within the year. This month I will focus on making sure I read scriptures daily. It is a priority goal for me that I never seem to have time for. This month, it will happen. Daily.

I also have a project this month: to edit and print the pictures we've taken since the cruise and put them into an album. This way, when I come to some free time and consider wasting it because I haven't made a plan for how to best use it, I can fall back to editing pictures.

Next month my focus will be on exercising, and my project will be working on food storage.