Peace of Mind Organizing

Taking the time for yearly planning

28 December 2017

The Central Library

I love this week between Christmas and January 1. I’ve always been inspired to organize and plan during this special week. Yesterday I took a whole day to focus on my goals for the coming year. I call it a personal retreat.

In order to stay focused on this, I knew I needed to get out of the house. So I planned a little itinerary, so I could shift locations as I shifted my planning focus or activity.

• I started out at my neighborhood coffee shop;
• I moved to the restaurant of the Missouri Botanical Garden (where I worked in PR decades ago);
• I then drove to the beautiful Central Library branch of the St. Louis Public Library.

I didn’t need any library resources (beyond wifi). I just wanted to be in beautiful, quiet surroundings. At the library I worked in two different rooms; those two mini-sessions were divided by a quick bite in the library’s cafe. Let’s pause for a moment to appreciate how cool it is that the library has a cafe!

I prepared for the day by getting up to date on my financials, so I could compare this year with prior years. And I also took the time on Tuesday to create a list of accomplishments for 2017. I do that every year and it’s a really fulfilling activity. It’s so easy to forget the great things that happen in the year and focus on less-great happenings or those things that didn’t happen at all. I also created a list in Evernote of what I hoped to accomplish by the end of the retreat day.

On retreat day, I packed my tote bag for my various locations. The tools I used included my laptop (primarily I used Evernote, Word, Quickbooks and Numbers) as well as my mind-mapping notebook, which I used to brainstorm ideas with myself and to also review the year’s mind maps. (I tend to use mind mapping when I’m trying to puzzle out a problem.) I took along some lined paper as well as a smaller unlined spiral notebook. And I took pens of various colors and thicknesses. I loved having an abundance of tools at my disposal so I could choose what I wanted to use as I shifted gears.

One of the first things I did was take a look at the goals I’d come up with at last year’s retreat. They were divided into four categories, all of which are important to me: Peace of Mind Organizing, Organize Your Family History (my genealogy website), genealogy research, and personal/family. I did a good job of achieving those goals in some areas and fell short in others.

I consulted this year’s goals as I crafted last year’s goals. I noodled around some ideas I’d been thinking about for a few months and I came to a few conclusions. And I wrote some concrete action steps for achieving my goals, as well as some habits I thought would support achieving the goals.

One thing I just realized I didn’t do yesterday, but which I usually do, is come up with my Word of the Year for next year. I actually did think of one last week (Spaciousness), but I would like to take myself through Christine Kane’s Word of the Year Discovery Tool to make sure that Spaciousness is right. (In 2017 my word was Fearless and it was helpful!) I’ll do that this week.

For me, taking a solid day to think about the coming year and reflect on the past year is one of favorite end-of-the-year activities. I’m hopeful it will pay great dividends!

Edited to add: After going through the Discovery Tool, I ended up choosing Connection as my Word of the Year!

Tagged with: goals, planning

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