February Goals

Kelly over at She Wears and Red Sox Cap (and her newest blog She Teaches), has inspired me to once again think about goals. Kelly creates monthly goals for herself which I think is a great idea because they are more easy to manage (and to be successful at) than yearly goals. When I read her post checking in with how she did on her January goals, it definitely motivated me to check in with my own New Year's Resolutions and to create some goals specifically for the month of February.

In an earlier post, I listed 5 goals that I have for myself in the year 2010. You can read about them here, but here is the short version recap:

• get in shape & eat better
• go with the flow a bit more
• make a quilt
• think more about others than myself
• read at least one book for pleasure each month

I have been incorporating more weight lifting into my workout routine which I am happy about and I have been trying to eat well. For me, eating well goes in phases and as I mentioned in a recent post, I tend to eat poorly when I am stressed, which has been the case this past week. I am currently reading In Defense of Food which is really helping me to get in touch with what I should be eating.

I think going with the flow is going successfully as well. Along the same lines, I am really trying to think of others and consider how other people might be perceiving a situation rather than just how I perceive it.

I started my quilt and have completed three blocks so far, so that goal is up and running!

Finally, in the month of January I read, The Secret Life of Bees, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Lovely Bones, and at least half of In Defense of Food. I would say I did pretty good with that goal!

So far my progress with these goals has been good, however some of very vague and that makes it hard to know whether or not I am really accomplishing them.  I should know how to write better goals considering I know how to write IEP goals which are about as specific as they get. The main thing is that goals should be measurable....I can count the number of books I read, I can count the number of quilt blocks I made, but the other goals are too vague. For the month of February, I am going to try and be more specific....


Health/Wellness Goals

• No Soda/Coffee- I know I have said it before, but I am still fighting the urge to have diet soda and once I have a little then I tend to fall back into my old habits. My goal is to not have ANY this month. Literally none. When I say it's okay to have it when I go out to dinner or on the weekends, I start having it more and more frequently and things get ugly. I would also like to stop having coffee at work. Usually work is the only place I ever drink it, so I would like to completely cut coffee out as well. The soda habit is more important to kick though because I don't crave coffee as much, I just have it because it's there and I'm cold! I will keep a tally of all the days during the month that I don't have any. I might slide, because I am only human, but I am looking for an overall high percentage of days without!

• Eat fewer processed foods- How to make this measurable? I am going to start by making sure that I eat at least one food with each meal that is completely untouched and not at all processed (so basically fruits and veges with every meal). I am starting to realize the extent of processing in almost everything I eat even if it seems healthy, so I am really trying to be more aware and think where changes can be made.

• Gym-Workout 5 times a week.

Personal Goals

• Read at least one book for pleasure in addition to the one I am currently reading. 
• Leave no more than 1 item undone on daily To Do list. ( I have become obsessed with To Do lists lately and really rely on them as a source of motivation to get things accomplished around the house as well as homework assignments etc. Sometimes multiple things don't get crossed off and I would like to get to the point where everything/almost everything is completed each day.)

School Goal

• Complete 4 pages of Comparative Internation Ed. paper each week. The final paper needs to be between 22 and 30 pages and is due at the end of March (or maybe in the middle of March). I figure I have at least 6 weeks to work on it, so if I complete 4 pages each week (less than a page per day), I will have 24 pages in 6 six weeks.

That is a lot of goals! I think I need to also take into account that success with goals also means not overdoing it, but I am giving this a shot. My intent is to post at the end of the month with how I did.