January's resolution review

So can you believe the first month of 2016 is hurtling towards the finish line? The end of January is the longest awaited end of any month in the year! Dark days, cold weather, with no twinkling Christmas lights to brighten the place up - let alone the fact that the last pay day was a thousand years ago. Alas, rejoice! For we are nearly *nearly* into spring. If you squint your eyes enough... you can nearly see it!

So I want to take one new resolution each month and build up each one, seeing how I am faring. I promise - even if it's not good - to give you an honest review of how I'm doing.

The first resolution I had in 2016 was to use my planner, that I had set up on google docs for myself. I have split this up into four tabs per week. First - an overview of my goals for the week, split into time management, financial goals, work goals, personal goals, weight loss goals, and rewards for meeting all of these. This is a really helpful page that keeps me accountable through the week about what I want to achieve and how I am going to get there. I do an overall page at the start of the month with three goals in the month that I really want to achieve, so these will all feed into these overall monthly goals in some way.

Second tab contains a breakdown of each day Fri-Thursday. I start my week on a Friday as this is my weigh in day. Each day starts with my meal plan, then my to do list for that day, followed by my main goal for this day. After this I have a checklist, loosely based on Keri Glassman's eight pillars, except I have nine. My pillars are: drink up, eat empowered, love more, nurture yourself, feed your brain, sleep deep, stress less, sweat often and daily time goals. By reviewing each of these for 5 minutes at the end of each day, it helps me feel accountable and reflect on a daily basis how I am managing all of these. There is also a space at the bottom to reflect on what was good and what I wasn't so keen on in the day.

The third tab is my daily time goals. Here I record roughly how much time I have spent doing all the things I want to make space for in my life. Things like reading my books, my magazine, walking my dog, exercising, sleeping, etc. This helps me on a weekly basis work out where I want to spend more time the following week, or what might not have got enough attention on the previous week.

The fourth tab for any given week is a reflection on the week gone past. Here I review (and give a score out of 5) whether I was bored - excited, unhappy - happy, tired - energetic, stressed - calm, unhealthy - healthy. Then there is text space with the following headers, where I make more journal-like notes: 'Good things about this week', 'Negative things about this week', 'Positive things about the negatives' and 'Things I will improve next week'.

So overall I think I have been doing a pretty good job. I am finding it hardest remembering to complete this before I go to sleep, so that is something I want to try to make more of a habit in February. So far, 2016, so good.