Seven months into 2015, and I’m finally getting around to writing another review of what’s gone on. I had planned to do these more regularly, but you know: Life.
Of course, it’s better that I’m looking back now than waiting until the busy Christmas season and the crush that represents the end of the year. At least that’s me patting myself on the back for actually getting around to performing…and sharing…any sort of review of the year.
Back in January, I wrote a post that chronicled the things that had happened from New Years Day through the first month of the year. At that time, I outlined seven categories that I wanted to grade myself on:
- Health/Nutrition/Fitness
- Household
- Family
- Financial
- Business
- Intellectual
- Spiritual
I still am going to use those categories to assess what my goals were. I’ll celebrate where I had wins and analyze where I failed. I’m also using this opportunity to reconfigure my goals for the remainder of the year. Things have changed a lot, as they always do, and it’s reasonable to consider steering the ship in a slightly different manner, towards different shores.
Throughout the first few months of the year, I was striving for consistency. I set goals for myself, both big and small, and then worked hard to make a little bit of progress every day. I was using the Lift app at the beginning of the year to track my habits. Lift became Coach.me, and I struggled through that transition. I finally abandoned Coach.me, and eventually settled on Way of Life as my habit tracker. My thought was that habits are the daily things I do to move me towards my goals. They’re the individual cobblestones that join together to create the road that I’m journeying on.
So here’s my report card for January 2015:
Health/Nutrition/Fitness – Grade B+
At the start of the year, I was above 278 pounds. I don’t really know how much I weighed the because I can’t find the data sheet that I recorded my weight on back in January. I finally got a Fitbit Aria Scale in February, so now when I weight myself, the weight and body fat percentage are send wirelessly to my Fitbit account. As of this writing, I’m down 21.4 pounds. I was down even more a week ago, but added back a couple of pounds since getting back to Kansas from Colorado. The most exciting part to me about that weight loss is that it has been almost all fat! I’ve lost 20 pounds of fat, while maintaining a fairly consistent lean weight of 180 pounds. I’m starting some habits with the beginning of August to burn off even more of that fat.
I’ve also had a goal of exercising for 45 minutes 5 out of every 7 days. Again, I don’t have ready access to my statistics from the early part of the year (they’re buried somewhere in the disaster that is currently my office), but from May 16th onwards I’ve worked out 57 times, intentionally rested 13 times, and missed 2 workouts. That’s five more workouts that I had to do over that time period, so I’m pretty please with my progress in that area.
I’m still working on my consistency, and I’m going to increase the intensity of my workouts starting in August. That should lead to more fat burning, and a better overall level of fitness.
Household – Grade B-
After a shaky start to the year, I’ve made significant progress on several house projects. The adoption of parts of Mike Vardy’s NOW Year Formula, including theming my days, has helped tremendously. Every week I’ve had at least one day dedicated to household tasks…many of which would have been neglected without the daily theme. I’ve also sprinkled in a large number of Remodel/Repair days, allowing me to focus on fixing things that have been broken for a very long time and/or making changes that we’ve neglected for far too long.
The house is still severely cluttered, but a couple of places have gotten better. I selected my walk-in closet as my first complete overhaul project. It was selected, in part, because it was a smaller space, and in part because I had 100% control over everything in there. It took the better part of two days, but the space is now much more usable. There are still a few items that need to find other homes, but overall the space reorganization went well.
After completing that project, I tackled our Nexus. At the start, it was the computer room from Hell!
The project is nearing completion, despite being delayed by my sudden trip to Colorado. We should have the room in great shape when school starts in mid-August. Quite honestly, the project cannot be completed until our college kids have moved back to school. They’re simply not interested in making the house that much better. I’d love to say that this attitude was in the process of turning around…but it’s not.
I’ve decided that we’re going to not implement any other reorganization projects until the three kids have returned to school. Then with just two school-agers in the house (Hectic 16 and Hectic 12), along with Hectic 25 and Hectic Grandson, we’ll have a lot fewer people here to make a mess. Although Hectic Grandson does seem to do a smashing job of trashing the house on a regular basis!
I’m still in love with the idea of a decluttering calendar for each month. The August Declutter Calendar from Home Storage Solutions 101. The idea is to put in 15 minutes of work every day and your house will improve over the course of time. I’ve failed at January through July, but plan to start in August with a new approach. I’d like to start before the kids leave for school, but this may end up being delayed until the middle of the month. The focus on photos and movies to start the month is one that’s near and dear to my heart. It nicely complements our attempt to rid the house of all cardboard boxes, hopefully significantly reducing our spider population. We’ve been told that all sorts of insects and spiders consume the glue in cardboard boxes, especially older ones. To that end, we’ve been moving towards more transparent plastic containers. This decluttering calendar would be a great way to jumpstart that project. The following week concentrates on craft projects. Our Nexus has a dedicated craft station now, so that also fits nicely.
Financial – Grade B
Since the start of the year, I’ve managed to get our financial recording in much better shape. I’m still struggling with formulating a budget that works in either the long or short terms. I did manage to get all the paperwork for the FAFSA’s completed, so all three colleges had the information they needed. I also got our taxes completed well before the filing deadline. It was still later than I would’ve liked, but I got them done. More importantly, I’ve laid the groundwork for our 2015 taxes and FAFSA’s (which depend on those tax numbers) so that I’ll have a better system in place for early completion.
More importantly, I’ve gotten our Quicken home financial accounting in much better shape than it’s been in a long time. Receipts are being collected in one, single, centralized location, and they’re being entered into Quicken on a weekly basis. Even when I was in Colorado I was able to work out a system where Hectic-12 sent me photos of the incoming bills and receipts and I was able to keep our financial house in order.
Although things aren’t perfect, the financial tracking system at Hectic Manor is dramatically better than it was previously. Great strides have been made on the tracking side.
Business – Grade B
From a pure blogging perspective, you’ve probably noticed that Hectic-Dad.com has had a lot more content added in the last six months than any time prior. I’ve managed to create an editorial calendar for every month, and I’ve even completed an editorial calendar for the remainder of 2015. I’ve also started to work on some of the other Hectic- properties, and plan to have rollouts for next year. At this point, Hectic-Kitchen is the next big project. I’m entirely rebooting the website. As things develop I’ll let you know where we stand. It’s a tremendously large project, and may require me to pull in some other resources. That’s a bit daunting at this point, so I’m taking my time to do excessive planning.
I’ve also built my social media presence, although not as quickly as I’d like. I’m negotiating with myself as to how much of my time I can spend on social media and building the various communities that I’d like to have. Everything takes a ton more time that I think it will, so I’m trying to be very realistic about growth, sustainability, and interactions with folks.
I do believe that the first half of 2015 has led to some great e-friendships and I’ve encountered some amazing folks. Right now I’m very happy with the quality of the relationships that I’ve built, so I’m seriously considering that over quantity for the latter half of the year.
Intellectual – Grade D+
Continued reading has proven difficult for me. For some reason I keep getting into books that take so much longer to read than I would like. While I’ve read several, I had hoped to read at least 24 business development books in 2015. I’m nowhere near that number. I’m using the library a lot more though, so my costs have been kept down. I’m still toying with the Audible.com subscription, but I haven’t taken that leap.
I still hope to read 36 personal enjoyment books and 24 personal development books through 2015. To achieve that I’m going to have to up my game significantly. I am trying to do some reading during the day, when I’m not so tired, so that should play into this goal fairly well.
I have increased the number of podcasts that I listen to. I’m working through several that are relatively new, so I started with their first episode. As of this past week I’ve caught up on several of them, and now only have current episodes to listen to. I’m enjoying the podcasts quite a bit, and with the amount of mowing that I have at Hectic Manor I should be listening to a lot more in the near future.
Family and Spiritual – Grade C-
I’m still struggling with family interactions. My goals have been very flimsy in this area. I’m still working on finding time to interact with each of the kids and Hectic Mom. There seems to be so much to do, all the time, that this is one area that I let slip. I have used the Now Year Formula theming to include some Family Days on the monthly calendar, and those have gone well. We’ve had several opportunities to do things as a family, and it’s been a blast. I’m planning on scheduling more such family activities in the future.
We’ve had major changes at the church I attend, and we’ve lost a large portion of our congregation. The odd part about that is that those of us who have stayed have gotten quite a bit closer. In that regard, things have improved quite a bit!
Conclusion
At seven months into 2015, things are still a very distinctive work-in-progress. Having taken the time to write this post, I see that I need to be much more proactive with selecting the habits that I’m going to work on (and track in Way of Life). I also need to set some very specific goals for the remainder of the year. As with all goals, they need to be specific, measurable, and have a set time for completion. I again realize that I’m going to have to take some time to plan the rest of the year. Fortunately, next Sunday is themed as a Planning Day, so I now know exactly what I’ll be working on.
