lists

Finishing strong in 2015



The end of the year normally approaches me with something approaching the speed of a bullet train and the solidity of a brick wall. The normal glitter-fuelled near hysteria of kids at the end of term, school pantos, carol services and more. Add that to the usual domestic chores labelled ‘getting ready for Christmas’ and it is easy to see why planning for my design business takes a bit of a back seat.

Last year I made the cardinal sin of committing myself to a big commission with a delivery date of the first week in January – no prizes for guessing what I spent my New Year holiday working on. I didn’t even dare drink too much for fearing of messing up the increases and having to rip it out.


But this year I am determined to be different. If not super organised than at least I aim to approach the end of the year with some business ends tied up and some firm plans in place to start the New Year out on a firm footing… and some calm, fun knitting for myself wouldn’t go amiss either.

I have been following along with Tara Swiger and her Holiday Sanity programme and I have to say that has really helped in terms of focussing my attention on tasks that need doing. Then I saw an amazing Instagram post from @BohoBerry, followed through to her blog and had a complete “Yes!” moment. her original blog post talks about setting goals to end the last quarter of your business or personal life in great shape but I thought it worked just as well as we enter the last few days of the year. Rather than disappear in a frazzle I thought it would be great to come up with 16 things that were achievable for me to do in the last days of 2015.

16 Things: Ready to start 2016




So, this morning I sat down with a strong coffee to make a list. Some of them may be a trifle vague and I admit that I did get a little de-railed towards the end with my sudden intention to Knit Yellow Socks. But I don’t think that’s a bad thing – we all need a little sunshine in our lives

Setting Goals



The combination of an energising family holiday and the annual 'back to school' enthusiasm for new routines and new habits has lead me to thinking and planning for the next few months.


I have always tended to focus on a monthly planning system - my Bullet Journal but invariably some tasks take longer than a month to achieve, or (all too often) they fail to progress at all leading to a vague sense of dissatisfaction.

There has been a lot of discussion recently about developing habits over 100 days rather than the more conventional 21 or 28 days and much has been written about why cognitively, this may prove to be more effective than traditional monthly goal setting Read here and here if you are interested more in this - it makes for fascinating reading.

Also, as I increasingly work with commissions and other folk within the fibre industry I am coming to realise that my work and knitting time needs to be planned much more in advance in order to avoid the dreaded deadline overwhelm.

With this in mind a bunch of my Ravelry group members have come together to form a chat thread over on my board. Some are using the 100 day approach and some are using monthly goals but all are offering friendly support and (gentle) accountability. There are no firm objectives and no pressure to achieve anything, it is just a helpful way for us all to stay on track and get some FOs off those needles over the coming months.

I get the feeling that I'm going to need an incentive to keep working on this:

Cosy Stripe blanket in Stylecraft Acrylic

 

Why not pop over and join us. We may even inspire you to set a few goals of your own - some of the group members have some great ideas. Likewise, if you have any tips or tricks for goal setting do please let me know. I'm always keen to hear what works for other people.