Welcome to the end of the month! I hope your January was everything you hoped it would be and more.
This weekend is the perfect time for a self-evaluation because tonight closes out this month and tomorrow morning launches February. To kick off the year, we made dream lists. Our dream lists are essentially finite goals with actionable steps attached to them. We include all sorts of goals: short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals; internal and external; physical, mental, and relational – everything. Think of it as a bucket list-plus.
Having dreams doesn’t mean we’ll achieve them, though. For that, we need to actively work towards them. This is why we include action steps in our dream list: to set a logical path for us to follow to reach our goals. Once we have the paths set in place, we can follow them to the destinations – our dreams.
How are you faring keeping on track with your dream list? Looking at mine, I can see that I’ve progressed quickly with some, slowly with others, and gone backwards with a couple of them. I assess my progress at regular intervals to determine what I can do better, whether my priorities have changed (and if so, how that should be reflected in my dream list), and celebrate what has gone well. Let’s go through a few of my goals to see what this means.
Example: Journaling (Creative)
Assess
One of the habits I want to grow is a journaling habit. I kicked off the month strong, writing a (small) page every night at bedtime; it’s a good way to close out the day. However, when this week hit, I was more interested in the extra twenty minutes of sleep per night than in journal entries: many of my days are missing. And I know why: I was awake every day by 05:45 (5:45 am) and busy doing stuff (job applications, errands, blogging, phone calls, reviews of board decisions, emails, volunteering…) through until about 23:00 (11 pm) each day. (And that busyness only included one walk! Ahhh!)
Onward
I will fill in the missed days based on my calendar entries for the week. I suspect they won’t have the same flavor to them that contemporaneous entries will have, but it must suffice.
Plan
Recognizing my main problem here to be one of overscheduling resulting in a sleep deficit, I can work to fix that. Parts of my day are static (Mass at 07, for example, or work and volunteer commitments). These things aren’t going to change, so I need to look to the things that can be shifted around.
Keep: My journal and its pen hanging out next to the last light of the night to be turned off has been helpful. Every time I go to turn the light off, if I skip journaling, I have to make a conscious decision with the reminder right there.
Shift: I post on this blog daily, but it has become more of a nightly thing; I will work on getting my posts up earlier in the day so I can call it a night sooner than I previously did.
Change: I have a habit of overscheduling my days. This problem was exacerbated this week in particular because I was working on certain tasks that I didn’t know how long they would take (and I was never quite satisfied with the results), resulting on my understimating them.
Every Dream, Tracked
Ideally, we keep track of our dreams until they’re fulfilled. (And then maybe write a book about how awesome it was to complete a dream!) I recommend going through this process (assess, onward, and plan; keep, shift, and change) with every dream you’re serious about completing. The frequency will depend on the dream. (For example, it doesn’t make sense to assess my sailing dreams in January: the water is frozen over here.)
It may also help to include cross-dream data. Do two or more of your dreams relate to each other? Maybe you’re learning martial arts from a teacher who only speaks Japanese during sessions and becoming fluent in Japanese is another of your dreams. Even if you didn’t do much in your plan with learning the language this month, maybe you understood a certain phrase for the first time. Count that as a win, because it’s progress towards your goals.
Even if you don’t have the time to conduct a thorough assessment of each dream every month, I do recommend scanning through your list at least that often. It may help you to say each one aloud. There are three main reasons for this. First, it reminds you where you’re going and allows you to update your dreams as your priorities change. Second, you may have an epiphany on the next actionable step for one of your dreams but you haven’t written it down yet; this provides you with just such an opportunity. Third, it helps to keep you motivated to strive towards your goals because you keep them in sight.
So, how are your dreams coming along?
