Resetting doesn’t happen as quick as we’d like!
I had to start small. Big dreams can’t happen overnight. I started the week off with a nail-biting race to submit a macro-economics assignment. Yep, yikes!
I decided almost three years ago to return to Uni. It wasn’t easy. I was way out of practice of studying. I realised pretty quickly my brain was set to auto-pilot for most things – unique thoughts didn’t just naturally occur anymore.
On a whim, after a bit of (I am undecided if it’s bad luck or good luck) landed with a large wad of cash almost five years ago. Hear me out! That large amount of cashola was the payout from an insurance claim after losing our house in a flood, along with every other materialistic possession we owned (unlucky). We weren’t harmed, (lucky). I no longer worry about the things I lost (they’re materialistic, and replaceable) but I do get upset when I have very limited photos of my children in their younger years (unlucky). I’m not an avid social media goer, and I don’t post a lot of photos online. It has given me a sense that experiences are sometimes much more valuable than possessions (lucky) and this makes me endeavour to achieve this with the kids over just buying them ‘stuff’. The house once belonged to my grandmother and when I bought it, flood insurance cover was super cheap (lucky). If I hadn’t of bought the house from my relatives, it would have been lost with no cover at all.
I lost a part of my soul with the house, but that’s another story.
So there I was, a large sum of money and an all-of-a-sudden shift in where I was at in life. We found a rental, started rebuilding our lives and things went back to a ‘new’ normal. I wanted to rebuild (the house), which meant a mile of recently updated red tape with council, custom-designed plans (would you know what you wanted tomorrow if you needed to design a new house?), finalising old home loans, applying for new construction loans… and I better not forget to add in the realisation I was in a horrible relationship that also needed to go.
House plans went on the back-burner with the epiphany that I was a shell of a person and needed to reboot. With ending a decade long relationship, upheaving my children to yet another level of ‘new’ normal, I needed to figure out what I was going to do with said money. It made me think long and hard about what people in general do with money. I like to play things relatively safe, so it went into a long-term deposit account where it was going to grow at a fixed rate until I was ready for it.
This spurred the idea that I wanted to be able to help people get their lives sorted. Financially speaking. I wanted to be the person they go to when they have a goal, have debt, have an income and just don’t know how to put it all together. I want to be their problem-solver. (Of course, there’s a much more professional way to go about describing a financial advisor – but I like mine).
Fast forward to this week – It was a mad dash to finish an assignment that I may or may not get good marks for. In that moment, minutes before the submission time countdown expired, I realised that I need to be better prepared. I need to start these tasks so much earlier. Easy to say, I know. Harder to achieve. Especially when the daily grind gets in the way.
This week. I’m learning micro-productivity. See the post here about what micro-productivity is and how it’s going to help. My goals for this week? 30 minutes for every remaining work day this week (Tuesday – Friday) focused on my next assignment. It’s not going to stop me from needing to plug in an entire weekend of working on it, but it’s going to reduce how overwhelmed I will feel come Saturday morning.
This weeks micro goals:
STUDY – 30 minutes Tue-Fri on my next assignment (Financial markets).
HEALTH – Drinking a glass of water every morning while I make my coffee.
MONEY – This may seem a round a bout way to have a financial goal – but every day I’m going to make a tea in my travel mug before leaving work, and carry a piece of fruit to eat as I’m leaving. (I work in a supermarket and it’s sooooo tempting to buy something on the way out).
AROUND THE HOUSE – Make the bed every morning as I get out of it. (This is habit I’ve done on and off over the years. I find when I get overwhelmed, housework goes out the window – even if I have pockets of time to get something done.) I need to hit reset on this one thing that will make me feel good of an evening when I walk into my room.
It’s tempting to keep the list going. I’m feeling motivated – in this minute of the week. But small steps will make it easier to achieve and not leave me feeling so disappointed when I can’t get ‘everything’ done. If, at the end of the week, I can successfully say I’ve done all of these things consistently this week – I’m doing better than last week. It doesn’t solve all my problems, but it’s a start.
Progress, not perfection.
What’s your small goal this week?
[…] if you are just starting out – they make everything super achievable. Check out the post on micro-productivity here.…
[…] out the idea of micro-productivity here; when goals seem too hard to tackle, sometimes little steps make the biggest…
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