Great Ideas

My mind works overtime to come up with so many fantastic plans: make and sell crafts, work out more, try new experiences (and recipes and places), organize my house, market my articles, and on and on. Ideas are not my problem; implementation is. I'm sure I'm not alone in this regard, but today I am noticing it more than usual, probably because I am so overwhelmed with things I want to do (or need to do) that I can't seem to get a foothold on actually doing any of them. Toward the goal of getting something accomplished, I'm making a personal schedule for myself, a "time budget" of sorts. I don't mean filling in my planner or writing down when I will complete mundane and seemingly endless tasks like laundry and vacuuming -- although those may not be bad ideas either.

Several years ago I created a document I called My Manifesto. It wasn't really a manifesto; it was an Excel spreadsheet on which I wrote down what I wanted to complete each day, in different areas of my life, to reach a bigger goal. I had four different areas -- work, health, social/personal, and financial (I think) -- and wrote a few tasks for each day. The spreadsheet had columns that reminded me what the bigger goal was, what I hoped to get done, what I actually did, and what the result was. I used it for a long time and it really did increase my productivity. Something I've always told my students and my coaching clients is that breaking large goals down into "bite-sized" pieces makes you less likely to give up on them (because there's a feeling of accomplishment associated with each of the steps toward the goal).

I'm not sure what happened to my original document. I had it saved on one of my old laptops, but I might have shared it with someone or sent it to myself via email. Reviving that schedule is probably the greatest idea I've had lately.