January Overview / February Goals
I put together some basic Resolutions At the beginning of January. I thought I might see now how I've been doing with those, and make some adjustments for February:
January Recap:
* I planned to do Wii Fit 30-60 minutes every day. I realised this would have to be before work therefore I'd have to get up at 6am. It took me nearly half the month to actually get up early enough. Then I fortunately found an exercise program called the No Excuses Workouts which has helped me so much. I realised this doesn't need to be all or nothing, all exercise counts. I bought the system from that site, but you can also do everything on there for free! This is three mornings of situps/pushups and three mornings of WiiFit at the moment. I ended up doing this for 14 of the days of January. I also added in walks at work and walking to work now that it's lighter. It all counts!
* I had planned to go for walks after dinner, but it's freezing, I'm glad I swapped to getting everything done earlier in the day. Going to scrap this goal.
* I decided my big problem last year was not eating breakfast at home. I succeeded at eating at home all but one day that I was really hungover, that day I had two pastries, but one day in the month is still very good!
* I succeeded in not buying sweets at the shop after lunch, that was a terrible habit, also I for some reason didn't buy as many StarBucks skim cappachinos or diet cokes either even though that wasn't a goal.
* I didn't track how well I did going to bed earlier, I think I did reasonably well but at the end there with the exam I would sometimes hit closer to Midnight than 9:30.
* I want to send an extra payment to Australia during 2009, The Simple Savings team suggested a task a month to do to save money, but this month I just didn't have time, instead when I do the budget I'll just put extra away to send. We had a look at some of our bills and couldn't find places to save.
* I have a goal to do the MySQL Developer certification this year and the PHP 5 Certifications. During January I studied for and passed my MySQL Developer 1 exam, that leaves 3 more to do. It was a lot of work to study during January, I set a goal to do 20 minutes study each day, and ended up doing 21 days of study, probably averaging well more than the 20 minutes. It was worth it but I need to allocate more time for the second exam.
* I wanted to finish Scrapbooking from 2008, do 2009 scrapbooking etc. Well I got the photos printed for the May-August album and the Paris adventure, this leaves the Sept-Dec album and Istanbul PLUS all the actual work. I made progress but not enough, I think these efforts were reduced by the other things (Exercise, sleeping and studying).
* I am so far behind on my Blog, Emails, Phonecalls, Card making. I want to be extra good this year about keeping in touch with people back home and friends around the world. To be fair though I think I contact everyone more than they contact me. And to be realistic I did as well as I could and I did fine.
* We still have all our travel ideas going strong for this year, though didn't achieve any of these goals in January. (New York City, Washington, Prague, Budapest Berlin, Cork, Belfast, Giants Causeway, Kilkenny comedy festival, Xmas in Australia??, Blarney Castle etc. etc). HOWEVER I did do a spreadsheet of the year for leave and savings, and I think we can do a couple of them atleast.
February Goals:
* Fitness: Continue the NEWO program 3xNEWO and 3xWiiFit + some extra walking etc.
* Food: Keep food diary, No chocolates after lunch, No pastries in the morning. Eat beakfast at home each day. In addition this month, I want to cook 8 Weight Watchers recipes i.e. pick 8 and assign them to nights it'll just happen then because of our grocery list/meal planning habits from last year. Also because of the busy month planned for February sometimes I'd like to choose a WW frozen meal instead of eating out. I'll track how often this month I either have a WW frozen meal or home made WW meal.
* Sleep: I want to be in bed every night by 10pm. I know this isn't going to always work because of our social life, so I'll try my best and track it to see how well i'm doing for next month.
* Finances:This really comes down to sticking to the budget we've set for this month. It's not unreasonable, it covers plenty. I have to not get carried away planning new stuff, there's plenty of free stuff going on in the city we can do to fill in the gaps. As for positive actions... Stop and think "Is this on the budget? Where will the money come from? Is it worth risking one of our goals?" I will track the days I did not spend beyond what we've budgetted.
* Education: I want to do the MySQL Developer 2 next, I also want to take it easier in February. I have a goal to plan out the study to start in March and make sure I revise the Dev 1 material and have it all put together neatly to revise again later on.
* Scrapbooking: Complete Paris scrapbook, Complete May-Aug scrapbook, Prepare January 2009 pictures/Pages. Start plan for Istanbul Album. Make progress on Sept-Dec album.
* Keeping in Touch: Send Paris Email/Letter, Send Christmas Email/Letter, Get up to date with blogging. Send January Email/Letter. Lots of ideas for phone calls etc. I want get through some of these that are on my mind.
* Travel, Adventures & Social Activities: Well in Feb we have FOSDEM, PHPLondon, Trip to Oxford, Bodies, Irish Film Festival, Valentines, My Birthdayparty. I want to start planning a trip for over Easter (can take 4 days off to get 10 days in a row!).
* Other : I've agreed to help with OSSBarcamp, GirlGeekDay and the Desktop Summit websites, so I want to make progress with these during February.
WOO makes me think I'm trying to do too much huh? Shame I always have to dream big, but even if I only reach 80% of what I want to do it's a LOT :D. I plan to report back at the beginning of March.
Originally published at Jaime\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s Blog.
January Recap:
* I planned to do Wii Fit 30-60 minutes every day. I realised this would have to be before work therefore I'd have to get up at 6am. It took me nearly half the month to actually get up early enough. Then I fortunately found an exercise program called the No Excuses Workouts which has helped me so much. I realised this doesn't need to be all or nothing, all exercise counts. I bought the system from that site, but you can also do everything on there for free! This is three mornings of situps/pushups and three mornings of WiiFit at the moment. I ended up doing this for 14 of the days of January. I also added in walks at work and walking to work now that it's lighter. It all counts!
* I had planned to go for walks after dinner, but it's freezing, I'm glad I swapped to getting everything done earlier in the day. Going to scrap this goal.
* I decided my big problem last year was not eating breakfast at home. I succeeded at eating at home all but one day that I was really hungover, that day I had two pastries, but one day in the month is still very good!
* I succeeded in not buying sweets at the shop after lunch, that was a terrible habit, also I for some reason didn't buy as many StarBucks skim cappachinos or diet cokes either even though that wasn't a goal.
* I didn't track how well I did going to bed earlier, I think I did reasonably well but at the end there with the exam I would sometimes hit closer to Midnight than 9:30.
* I want to send an extra payment to Australia during 2009, The Simple Savings team suggested a task a month to do to save money, but this month I just didn't have time, instead when I do the budget I'll just put extra away to send. We had a look at some of our bills and couldn't find places to save.
* I have a goal to do the MySQL Developer certification this year and the PHP 5 Certifications. During January I studied for and passed my MySQL Developer 1 exam, that leaves 3 more to do. It was a lot of work to study during January, I set a goal to do 20 minutes study each day, and ended up doing 21 days of study, probably averaging well more than the 20 minutes. It was worth it but I need to allocate more time for the second exam.
* I wanted to finish Scrapbooking from 2008, do 2009 scrapbooking etc. Well I got the photos printed for the May-August album and the Paris adventure, this leaves the Sept-Dec album and Istanbul PLUS all the actual work. I made progress but not enough, I think these efforts were reduced by the other things (Exercise, sleeping and studying).
* I am so far behind on my Blog, Emails, Phonecalls, Card making. I want to be extra good this year about keeping in touch with people back home and friends around the world. To be fair though I think I contact everyone more than they contact me. And to be realistic I did as well as I could and I did fine.
* We still have all our travel ideas going strong for this year, though didn't achieve any of these goals in January. (New York City, Washington, Prague, Budapest Berlin, Cork, Belfast, Giants Causeway, Kilkenny comedy festival, Xmas in Australia??, Blarney Castle etc. etc). HOWEVER I did do a spreadsheet of the year for leave and savings, and I think we can do a couple of them atleast.
February Goals:
* Fitness: Continue the NEWO program 3xNEWO and 3xWiiFit + some extra walking etc.
* Food: Keep food diary, No chocolates after lunch, No pastries in the morning. Eat beakfast at home each day. In addition this month, I want to cook 8 Weight Watchers recipes i.e. pick 8 and assign them to nights it'll just happen then because of our grocery list/meal planning habits from last year. Also because of the busy month planned for February sometimes I'd like to choose a WW frozen meal instead of eating out. I'll track how often this month I either have a WW frozen meal or home made WW meal.
* Sleep: I want to be in bed every night by 10pm. I know this isn't going to always work because of our social life, so I'll try my best and track it to see how well i'm doing for next month.
* Finances:This really comes down to sticking to the budget we've set for this month. It's not unreasonable, it covers plenty. I have to not get carried away planning new stuff, there's plenty of free stuff going on in the city we can do to fill in the gaps. As for positive actions... Stop and think "Is this on the budget? Where will the money come from? Is it worth risking one of our goals?" I will track the days I did not spend beyond what we've budgetted.
* Education: I want to do the MySQL Developer 2 next, I also want to take it easier in February. I have a goal to plan out the study to start in March and make sure I revise the Dev 1 material and have it all put together neatly to revise again later on.
* Scrapbooking: Complete Paris scrapbook, Complete May-Aug scrapbook, Prepare January 2009 pictures/Pages. Start plan for Istanbul Album. Make progress on Sept-Dec album.
* Keeping in Touch: Send Paris Email/Letter, Send Christmas Email/Letter, Get up to date with blogging. Send January Email/Letter. Lots of ideas for phone calls etc. I want get through some of these that are on my mind.
* Travel, Adventures & Social Activities: Well in Feb we have FOSDEM, PHPLondon, Trip to Oxford, Bodies, Irish Film Festival, Valentines, My Birthdayparty. I want to start planning a trip for over Easter (can take 4 days off to get 10 days in a row!).
* Other : I've agreed to help with OSSBarcamp, GirlGeekDay and the Desktop Summit websites, so I want to make progress with these during February.
WOO makes me think I'm trying to do too much huh? Shame I always have to dream big, but even if I only reach 80% of what I want to do it's a LOT :D. I plan to report back at the beginning of March.
Originally published at Jaime\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s Blog.