getter Archives - Tiffany Joy

Last DreamWard Bound I talked about how I organized and separated my goals and dreams. This helped me easily see my priorities and make a plan to reach my ideal life.

I know being organized does not fit every personality. Some people thrive in doing work as it comes along or as they are inspired. Some people do not like making lists or tracking their goals in detail.

I am not one of those people. More and more I love organizing my goals and tracking them. I have spreadsheets with formulas and charts. I have index cards and notebooks.

These things help me track my goals, so when I feel discouraged and forget my past achievements I can look back. I can see where I started and how far I’ve come.

Having my time and goals tracked also helps me plan for my future. I can see that I only consistently write for about 4 hours a week and draw for about 3. I can see that I can increase my prayer and Bible study time by 0.1 hours a week, because I know how much I’ve spent on godly things in the previous week.

By seeing my patterns with time I can see where I can improve. I can also see how long it takes to complete a project, book, or activity.

I do want to clarify that although I have 5 sheets with a lot of charts for visual tracking I did not start with that many.

I started with a notebook and only tracked time I spent reading the Bible and my television watching. After a few weeks I added other goals and then I moved it to one sheet on my computer. Little by little I added things I tracked and organized the sheets more. I can now see the following:

How many hours I put into a certain category each week (writing, blog posts, church, Bible reading, prayer, painting/ drawing, reading, etc).
On average how much time I put into creative work, writing, or spending time with God.
What percentage I spend in my different categories.
How long it takes me to read a book.
If my physical endurance is increasing.
How many hours I’m spending on promotion and revenue for my creative life.

The take away from all of this is to start small with your goals and tracking, but let both grow. This will help you to continually be improving and moving towards your goals and dreams.

I am sitting in my favorite cafe that is just down the road from my home with a hat, striped t-shirt and shorts on feeling like a real artist or at the very least a creative person with a great life. It is interesting since that is not how I woke up. I woke up with the annoying question of, “why?” Why am I even trying to lose weight? Why am do I wrote and force writing upon myself? I also did not want to do any of it. I did not see the benefits of going to the gym when I was not meeting my goal. This morning really was all about the gym. I wanted to be lazy, so I was for a bit, but then I went. I worked out for an hour, pushing myself to burn more calories. Now I feel better and got to relearn a lesson: If you push towards your goals not matter what the outcome is you will be happier than you would if you did not. Also you can’t blame or put yourself down if you try your best.

That was this morning thoughts, but let us get to what I did this week. Since I set up new goals and revised older goals last week this week was really focused on figuring out how to meet them. I found a good reading plan to read through the Bible in a year. I tried really hard to diet and work out almost everyday, which did not really work because I was not tracking what I was eating and I think I ate too little and still worked out. I also tried to be more organized with my time, which was hard since I am changing job positions at my work. I was not as productive with my poetry writing as I would have liked, but at least I wrote from the heart. Another thing I did was edit my poetry reading of Your Efforts and posted on to my YouTube channel. It was not my best video but at least I did it.

I also have an idea for my YouTube channel to change all the thumb nails. I want what the audience sees to look professional and informative, not just screen shots of the video or random pictures. That is a thought for the future though.

Now that my rant is over here is the list of what I did this week.

Your Efforts (A Poetry Reading) {video}

Thank You (A Poem)

One More (A Poem)

What To Do? (A Poem)

The Me I Want To Be (A Poem)