Hasta La Ideas

In 2011, I’m trying out small, monthly resolutions instead of large, annual New Year’s resolutions. My public resolution for January was to be more organized in the kitchen, and create and use more nutritious meal plans for my family. If you read SimpliFried, then you know I even made one of my meal plans downloadable for anyone who wants it.

The small goal worked well for me, and I’ll try to continue it into February along with my new resolution for the second month. I think the first resolution was successful because it was:

• Scheduled. Every Monday I had “Meal Planning,” written on my calendar between 8:00 and 9:00 p.m. The block of time on the calendar helped me to commit to it.
• Prepared. I had the Harvard Medical School’s guide to healthy eating Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy as my nutrition guide, a blank meal planning worksheet, a pen, a stack of cookbooks, and my favorite recipes from the internet with me every time I made the plan.
• Concrete. My goal to make and follow a weekly meal plan wasn’t lofty or ambiguous. What needed to happen was clear from the beginning and it was easy to break into action items.
• Achievable. I knew it was possible to achieve the resolution, I just had to take the time and invest the energy to make it happen. Additionally, with fresh food in the house, I knew if I didn’t stick to the plans I would be wasting my money.
• Accountable. By telling my family and the readers of this website that this was my resolution, I felt a greater sense of responsibility to carry out the goal. I’m not sure this was necessary since I wanted to do it, but it certainly didn’t hurt.

My plan had been to make February my Super Simple Month again this year, but it unfortunately looks like it’s not going to work. I’ll have to rearrange things on the calendar to try for it in March or April. One of my extended family members is very ill and I need to do some traveling this month related to her.

As an alternative, my public resolution for February will be to go through everything — absolutely everything — in my office. There will be uncluttering, organizing, rearranging, and a lot of paper processing. I spend the vast majority of my day in about 150 square feet of space, and this room needs my attention. To a visitor, my office doesn’t look cluttered, but I know what lies beneath. I know how stuffed my filing cabinet is and how many things are ready to go from this space.

Tonight, I’ll kick off my monthly resolution by splitting the room into zones and scheduling when I will address these zones on my calendar. One shelf a day, followed by one drawer a day, and so-on-and-so-forth until I’ve tackled the entire room.

Do you have resolutions? What are you doing to achieving them? Can you do something today to get one step closer to your goal?

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