Status

Hello and welcome to week 7 of my blog!  I am super excited that I’ve made it to week 7 and that you are reading this.  Many months ago, when I decided to try my hand at writing a blog, I had this vision that I would share this with my friends and some of my online friends, and it would quickly grow into a following and online community that would comment and share.  Ok, so I was naively optimistic.  I see now that it’s going to take more time and probably some additional effort/marketing to get things going, and that is ok.

So, how are you all on the beginning of this sixth week of the year?  I don’t really believe in New Year’s resolutions, but I know that the new year is generally a good time to rededicate ourselves to whatever it is that we want to be better.  Now that the holiday craziness is behind us, or if you are student, finals are over, and the kids are back in school, we are able to concentrate a bit more on our goals.

If, back in January, you did recommit to improving some part of your life, you have had a solid 25 weekdays, 5 weekends, and 1 holiday to navigate – how did you do?  It’s a good time for a status check – or reality check is a more accurate term.  Where you realistic with the goal that you set for yourself?  Did you do any work on your values and priorities first to guide you with your goals?  Are you going too easy on yourself?

I’m going through the process of looking at my own list of commitments/recommitments to determine if it was realistic for me (see comments above J).  Oh, sure, we can do anything we 1) set our mind to, and 2) really want to do.  But, sometimes that comes at the cost of other things – sleep, sanity, personal hygiene – just kidding, but I am trying to make a point.  I think it’s important to acknowledge that there are only so many hours in a day, and a large portion of them are spent doing things that we HAVE to do, like work, and paying bills, and home maintenance.  Those few other precious hours should definitely be spent doing something that is a high priority to us.

 

I think it’s important to periodically take a status on our goals.  It’s a very common practice in the workplace.  Much of my job as a project manager is communicating the status of things.  We use a green/yellow/red key to communicate the general condition of a certain deliverable.  It’s an easy way to take a pulse check, and everyone understands the symbolism:  green means everything is great and we are on track – we may have challenges, but it doesn’t look like they will be a problem in achieving our goal.  Yellow means that we are concerned that there may be something that could impact our ability to meet our goals – it hasn’t happened yet, so we could recover, but we acknowledge a problem or an issue.  Finally, red means that there is trouble.  We are “off the rails” so to speak – this also can be fixed, but for not there is definitely some issues that currently could prevent us from meeting our goal.

So, think about your goals – are you green, yellow, or red?  Or ‘NS’ – not started?  Be honest – it’s only going to help you if you can honestly assess where you are at.  You may need to tweak your goals, or maybe rededicate yourself.  A lot of times, we get disappointed that  we haven’t seen the results we expected, and give up, but what we really need to do is assess our expectations (see comments in first paragraph again J)

Sometimes, too, there a things that happen that we could never expect or predict.  I remember one Martin Luther King holiday when I got a positive pregnancy test – that’ll throw your plans in a swirl.  I have also had one of those events this year – I was recently diagnosed with breast cancer.

I share this with you all because as I revisit my goals and plans for the year, this event will definitely have an impact on them.  This blog, for one, is most likely going to take a hit.  It’s been a dream of mine to do this, and I will try to keep up with it, but realistically, it will have to fall to the bottom of the pile after my family, my job, and my health.