Happy New Month!

This month, I have a clear goal in mind: family. While family is pretty much always my number 1 priority, this month brings a few new things to the forefront.

First – my little (and only!) sister will be delivering her first child within a few short days. I am going to absolutely bury this kid in love. My sister has had a long road to get here and fought hard for her own family, and I couldn’t be more excited. I want to make sure I really intentionally set aside a lot of time to be there for her and my new niece.

Second – all of my children will be returning to school in September. All of them. This is the last month where they’re just here, present, self-directed and available. I don’t want to miss any of that.

So today I spent the whole day with my kids doing art projects, building things, and going out to dinner. I’ve got a beach trip planned for later in the month, and several day outings. I’ve got some days I’m setting aside from my normal work schedule to be with my sister.

Family always comes first – but this month especially, it’s coming extra-first.

Happy New Month!

We’re halfway through a year that feels like it both started yesterday and simultaneously has endured for decades. But my own warped sense of time aside, there are things to do!

Last month, I vowed to have a list of goals and projects for myself and my family to complete by the year’s end. I do! I won’t share boring and context-less details with you, but I have several trips with the kids planned, a few projects around the house, and several large professional goals that are all aligned and within sight.

So now to execute! For July, I want to get done a major writing project that I have in front of me. It’s certain to be a career-booster if I execute on it well, so I’m excited about it. When details are relevant, I’m sure I’ll share them here.

Tomorrow is December 31st! Or at least, that’s what it will seem like on December 31st, when you’re saying, “wow, it seems like only yesterday it was July.” Fill in those gaps, and don’t roll through the years without noticing!

Happy New Month!

Look at that, I actually put this one out on the 1st instead of getting distracted by another topic and writing it on the 2nd. And speaking of little victories, I accomplished my May resolution!

My goal had been to view May as an entity, to be able to look back on the month and describe it as something other than the days that comprised it. I can do that.

I own a house now.

I didn’t before! I rented. Now I own a place. (Well, as the classic joke goes, the bank owns it.) I expect this topic of adventure will find it’s way into the blog here and there, as homeownership is altogether new to me. But the point remains that I can say something distinct about the month of May 2021 – that’s the month where I bought my first house.

On to June!

I’m going to go a little farther here. At the end of this month, the year will be halfway over. So by the end of this month, I want to have a real roadmap for what I want the rest of the year to look like. Trips, hobbies, career advancement, kid milestones, home improvements. I want to have a solid 5-10 item list to knock out by the end of the year, so that’s my resolution.

As always, wish me luck – I do the same for you.

That’s three times in a row that the NMR post is going out on the 2nd instead of the 1st. In addition to being a funny pattern, it also means that last month’s resolution can safely be called a spectacular failure.

Seriously, last month I resolved to be able to view April as a whole, to see what happened as a result of it, and to be conscious of the passing of time. Here’s what happened in reality – I didn’t even notice the entire month.

That’s my blind spot. Individual days – great, solid. I usually rock those; rarely do I go to bed feeling unaccomplished. On the other end of the spectrum, my 5- and 10-year plans are going great. I can look back on the last 5 years and say I’ve moved in the direction I wanted, at the pace I wanted. There have been unusual turns and missteps, but I’m definitely five years ahead of where I was five years ago.

But on that middle scale, the months fly by.

My father, a brilliant musician, once let me in on one of his secrets as a drummer. He said if he was improvising a drum solo and he made a mistake, he’d just deliberately repeat it eight measures later, and then it looked like a creative choice rather than an error. His broader lesson was sometimes just leaning into your mistakes and not fighting the natural pattern can be helpful, especially if the mistake is mostly stylistic anyway.

So maybe I’ll just keep putting out the NMR posts on the 2nd, because I’m choosing to. But also maybe I’m going to give being cognizant of the month one more shot. I can have the same resolution two months in a row, because these are my rules and who’s going to argue?

Happy New Month!

This is twice in a row where I didn’t do my NMR post until the 2nd day of the month. I’ve been going a mile a minute lately; lots to do, lots to accomplish, not enough Johnny. In fact, I even wrote a post about it yesterday, because I’ve been thinking so much about choice as it relates to time. But I completely missed noting the actual first of the month!

In the best of times, I don’t really mark the passing of weeks and months. A dozen or more times in my life my own birthday has come and gone without me remembering. I’m bad at the medium term – I’m great at ten-year plans and day-to-day actions, but bad at noticing that a month has passed.

That’s my resolution this month. To try to get my mind focused on a month as a unit, to see what I can really make a month mean. To meditate some, try to reduce my overall stress level. I already have at least one camping trip planned, and that always helps.

But really, my goal is to feel a little different on April 30th than I do on other days – to be able to look back on April as a whole and say that I made it more than the sum of its days. Wish me luck.

Happy New Month!

It’s on the 2nd today for two reasons – one, I accidentally got really inspired on a different topic and forgot it was the first of the month yesterday, and wrote something else. And two, because today is my eldest daughter’s birthday and so that puts me in a ‘new beginnings’ kind of mood. Plus, I made up the whole ‘New Month’s Resolution’ thing anyway, so I can do it when I want!

February’s resolution was pretty successful – I managed to create my “relaxation zone” a handful of times and it was very nice. It also made me realize that more of my resolutions need to be in that direction; I’m not in any particular danger of accidentally not working hard. If anything, I’m more likely to push myself past the point of breaking, and I don’t want that to happen. I want to be around for a lot more of my kids’ birthdays.

So my resolution this month is something that comes very naturally for some, but for me requires deliberate action. I want to spend 10 minutes every day in direct sunlight, weather permitting.

I don’t commute to work, and the days have been short, cold and dreary of late. I haven’t had a lot of natural reasons to go outside. But sunlight makes me strong as it does you, and so I’m going to just go let it cover me and fuel me for ten minutes of nothing else each day that the sun chooses to show itself.

This is where it was when I became a father. It’s worth noting.

Happy new month!

Wow, January flew by. I’m happy to say I achieved what I set out to, though! I feel like my work is flowing very well.

While obviously I want to continue that focus, for my actual Resolution this month I want to look at my personal routines. I felt stretched pretty thin last month and I didn’t always feel like I “owned” every hour of the day. Like I was always doing what I wanted with my time. In fact, it’s been a while since I felt like that.

I have a certain kind of scenario that exists in my head that represents “casual relaxation.” It usually involves reading, music, and a specific comfortable chair. It often involves a snack I’ve made myself; I make very good hummus. And while I always enjoy this arrangement when it happens, it’s utterly non-productive in the short term and so I tend to automatically cut it whenever I’m pressed for time. Which is always.

So this month, I’m resolving to do it. An hour of just that, once a week. I’m not going to the moon, here. I just want to relax, four times this month.

Wish me luck!

Happy New Month!

It’s the last new month of the year! An exciting time. I have a strong NMR this month, based on something that’s been on my mind a lot of the last one.

I have a strong inherent dislike of “para-work.” That’s a term I invented, and it’s a portmanteau of “parasitic work.” Basically, work that only exists to talk about other work.

Once upon a time, I had a job as a medical sales representative and I was over the road most of the day, outside of an office. I had to report my daily activities in a very terrible CRM tool with a spotty 4G iPad. Thus, it took about an hour to do the data entry for each sales call, even ones that lasted ten minutes. The ratio of actual work to “para-work” was terrible.

I hated it. I recognize that some amount of para-work is always necessary. But in my mind, the less of it the better. The more juice you spend on actual productive work and the less you spend on just reporting what you did or explaining what you’re doing or creating a list of things to do, the better.

So my resolution this month is to create an efficient enough system with substantial automation to these processes such that my “para-work” represents 10% or less of my total working hours. I already have a number of systems I’m trying out and a way to record time spent on each of them so I can track progress towards this goal. The more efficient I can get at producing good work, the more I’ll enjoy it, and the more I enjoy it, the better work I’ll produce!

Here’s to reaching your own goals!

Happy New Month!

My resolution this month is to think more.

Recently at work, I’d found myself in a sort of “reactionary trap” where all I was doing was putting out fires and performing project maintenance tasks that had crept up around me due to the somewhat unpredictable nature of this year’s events. But my biggest value-add is clear, strategic thought, and so one of my fantastic co-workers really helped me audit myself and restructure my workload to allow for more “intentional thinking.” We’re only at the early stages of digging out of my reactionary hole, but even the small improvement that’s happened so far has been excellent.

That, in turn, made me look around my own life and realize that I’ve been pretty reactionary lately as well. I’m very active, very scheduled, very busy – and so I haven’t really had time lately to just think. To spend time in deliberate thought about my future, my philosophy, better ways I could be living my values or supporting my family. My mind is constantly busy, but I’m usually aiming my thoughts at some immediate problem or task. I want to give myself space to just be creative, open, and without agenda. No fires to put out, just the fire within to feed.

My grand over-ambition wants me to commit to finding a full day to do this. It’s a romantic idea – no electronics, just a notebook and a quiet place. It’s a pipe dream – I haven’t had a full free day in years. But I also know that this is the sort of task where I can’t squeeze it in, trying for 20-minute sessions in between other tasks.

No, I both have to make it a big rock, but simultaneously respect what actually needs to get done in my life. So that itself is going to be my resolution. I’m going to find a time to think – any amount of time will do – and see how much I can really get into the right state of mind in the time I have. Then I’ll record it, and however long it was, I’ll try to break it. My aim here is to test, and find the minimum amount of time that’s viable for me really to get into a state where I can deliberately turn the machinery of my mind to the task of seeing into the future. Once I know that, I can make that amount of time a priority – ideally once a week, but even once a month will be an improvement.

Wish me luck, share any advice you have, and may all your endeavors teach you something!

Happy New Month!

My goals are usually positive. I don’t mean “positive” as in “good and happy,” I mean “positive” in the sense that they revolve around me doing something. A “negative” goal can still be good – quitting smoking, for instance, is a “negative” goal, in that the goal is for you to stop doing a bad thing.

Despite the fact that negative goals can be good things, I don’t usually employ them. I like to fill my life with so much good that there’s no room for bad, rather than focusing on the bad itself.

This month though, I’m clearing some room.

I’ve removed all social media from my phone, and put it behind certain walls even on my computer. Generally I don’t spend a lot of time on social media anyway, but I’m often a junkie for election news. Despite that, I never actually enjoy it or find value in “pop politics,” so this time I’m just making the conscious decision to stay off of it for the whole month (and a few extra days…).

My blog posts will still automatically post to LinkedIn and Twitter (if that’s where you follow me from), and I still use LinkedIn for work so that’s a little different. But if you see me on Twitter, chase me away and remind me that I’m trying to stay clean!

Good luck with your own goals, whatever they are this month!