Ready for a New Year?
Recently, I’ve been seeing this advertisement across Facebook for a 30-second dance party button. I find it hilarious and it is about as much as I feel like partying these days.
All joking aside, this is what I did before going to bed last night. An epic and frantic 30-second dance party!
In fact, I challenge you to watch the video and dance!
Happy New Year!
I fully recognize that although January 1st represents a new year, not a whole lot will change. The pandemic is still raging, I will still be working from home and social distancing. Although there are several vaccines, it may take most of the year (and into 2022) to get the majority of the population vaccinated. 2021 will be another long, difficult year.
Even with all of that, I am still cautiously optimistic. I just can’t help it; I love the idea of new beginnings and the opportunity to become a little bit better. Unlike my traditional New Year posts, where I regale you with all the inspiring things I plan to accomplish in the new year, I will not do that this year. I only have one goal for 2021.
FINISH
By finish, I plan to finish doing all the things I have promised myself I would do. This can be everything from finally getting rid of an old computer to backing up my hard drive, eliminating the expired food from my pantry, to actually completing the intro to French course I purchased 5 years ago.
I have a confession, I LOVE purchasing information products (i.e. classes to learn new skills), yet in the past 10 years, I think I’ve only ever finished 2-3. This has got to stop. Part of my 2021 goal to “FINISH” is I can’t purchase any new courses or info products. Even if I were to finish everything on my list, I won’t be adding new things in 2021.
I have mentally begun preparing my list of items to finish in 2021 (and no, I won’t be listing them all out—it would bore you to tears). Needless to say, my less than stellar results from 2020’s goals made me realize that I don’t need to set new challenges, just follow through with existing ones.
I am definitely not one of those women that loves her to-do list. I typically only use them for grocery shopping, work projects, and when I’m packing for a long trip. It’s not that I don’t make them, it’s that I get bored quickly and stop caring about getting everything finished. LIttered throughout my house are small stacks of random post-it notes, 3x5 cards, and scraps of paper of various “to-do” items.
Parameters for the 2021 Year of “FINISH”
Items on my list can’t be normal everyday items (laundry, exercise, changing the air filters, etc.)
Estimated time to complete item needs to be 1+ hours
Items on the list must in some way improve my life
To keep me somewhat organized, I will use this stack of 3x5 cards. There are 100 cards in the stack, and each card will represent a new item. I have not set any specific expectation of using all of the cards; this is simply just the tool for recording my 2021 actions. As of today, I already have 22 cards filled out and three accomplished.
I already started “finishing” some of my 2021 goals a little early. My holiday break from work over Christmas/New Years’ gave me extra time to kick off my actions.
For example, for years, I’ve meant to create a spreadsheet of all the service work done on my car so that when I take it in for repairs, and they tell me that the timing belt should be changed, I can quickly see when it was replaced in the past. I hate having to deal with car repairs since I know nothing about them. I’ve faithfully saved all my receipts for 10 years, and I had anticipated it would take me 3 hours to complete the task. It only took 40 minutes, and I now have an easy to access, comprehensive look at all the work completed on my car.
As boring as this example sounds, it felt amazing to FINALLY have that item completed.
So, what’s on your 2021 list to accomplish? Do you have any big (or little) goals?
