April Refocus
It’s obvious that I’ve been in a cranky little slump lately. Part of me just wants to burn my to-do lists and surrender. The other part of me is just alive with energy and passion to work on my future. Balancing these two feelings and making sure I have fun is proving very tough lately.
It’s time to ReFocus
The month of April is like a new beginning as everything brightens and blooms. It’s another chance to take the reigns instead of letting them take you down and that’s just what I’m going to do . . .
Exercise
this is a HUGE missing piece of my life lately. I miss connecting with nature and moving my body. I don’t get that anymore and a lot of it is my fault. It’s too cold or I’m too busy ect. I miss the feeling I get before during and after I work out. I’m much more healthy and I feel good. I know i can’t expect to get on a decent schedule right away but 1 time a week of moving that brings joy is acceptable at this point. I currently don’t want to count the 2 miles I walk on school days as it’s obviously not the kind of workout I’m envisioning though I do enjoy my city strolls.
Finance
if you read my Balancing Money series, you know that I aim to save as much as possible while still living my life and going to culinary school. You will also soon find out that I kind of fell off the wagon in March and NOT getting my act together is simply not an option as I will be losing hours at work and working some days at another location without pay.
Self Care & Fun
When I admitted recently that I wasn’t having any fun, I consciously changed that. I went out on school nights and did more things I enjoyed. Unfortunately this came at a literal price of spending too much money and not getting enough sleep. I need to work on balancing this too. My self care rituals have taken a slight dip as well. I only broke the TV rule once which is a success in my book but I have been giving myself 10min of reflecting/meditating less and less. I find I do it only when I get to the point where I think I NEED it which is not the right way to go. I need to go back to doing this EVERYDAY 100%
My Future
I have so many exciting ideas and ventures that I sincerely hope to get off the ground and I’ve been filling some of my leisure time working on them. I also recruited the help of my sister Marie to assist me and will be having more "business meetings" to help.
My Health
My true foods health philosophy is always in the works. Im constantly changing and honing it until I feel I can preach it to everyone in the right way. I have a rough copy in the works that I will post in time. There are no new concepts, just health the way I do it. Eating intuitively, eating foods that are true and real, incorporating new things such as sea vegetables into my diet and forever creating and learning things to share. The more I embrace this philosophy, the better I feel and the more confident I feel about helping people with their own health. It’s taking a lot of time and a lot of times my efforts are thrown off track by life, but theres no time like the present to focus on.
For the next 2 days I will be celebrating my 5 year anniversary with Chris somewhere in the Poconos. We had our whole trip planned but it looks like we may have to make some changes due to weather closings. Either way, we are beyond excited to travel on a little road trip to a place we have never been together. We have the most fun when we travel! I hope to come back refreshed and ready to refocus on all of the above.
The Inferior To-Do List
Lets face it, my To Do list is always packed with stuff. Most of the tasks are things that are not fun, pleasurable or relaxing. In fact, looking back in the past few months, I cant remember a time that I just had a day to let go and not worry about anything. Sure, I give myself at least 10min of self-care a day and I do feel relaxed happy when I am working on my cooking experiments but those moments are getting few and far between.
The problem is, I signed up for this. THIS is the time where things get hard and where practicing balance is so damn important. It’s a fierce reality that these things are not going away. I must accept that my “days-off” are going to be filled with catching up on things and not much fun. I refuse to give up because I know that it will all be so worth it in the end. I already feel it is!
The only things I can do to make things better for myself is to change my attitude and start working smarter. The attitude is definitely a work in progress, but working smarter is a bit easier.
I often look at my long list and get too overwhelmed. So overwhelmed that I just bury my head in the sand and don’t want to even do ONE thing. My boss says its Paralysis by Analysis. I googled that exact term and sure enough, that’s exactly it!
So, for now on, I am going to be using a more structured To-Do List that looks like this . . .
A while back, Katie posted this concept of a Roman To-Do list. The concept is genius! You split your list into 3 columns. The first one is a list of things that MUST be done that day no matter what. The second is things you SHOULD do but could get away without doing. The third is for what you HOPE to do or MAYBE can get done.
I tried this once before and it was really eye opening. Seeing all the things that had to be done and things that could wait relieved a lot of stress. And like she says, you can also use this as a way to balance out your week. For instance if you are crossing off too much from the first two columns and not from the HOPE/MAYBE column (which is usually filled with more fun activities than not) then you can SEE that you need some me time. Or, you can flip it the other way and see that you are messing around too much and not getting enough done.
The return of the Roman to do list has started back up today and already I feel much better and have much less pressure as I feel more relaxed knowing that if I don’t get certain things done, its not the end of the world!
Are you a To-Do list maven? What are your best time management tips?
