blog to discovery

I’ve had a few problems recently. The most noticeable being the loss of my computer. The battery stopped charging and only occasionally registered the power supply. One theory is this may have been due to my daughter’s fascination with laptops; she had a tendency to pull out of the charging cable and chew on it. I now have a new 17″ latoptop, but have had to reinstall programmes and transfer files which has taken a long time (in fact I’m not quite there). This was soon after followed by a holiday where the internet connection wasn’t working. All this loss of technology, along with some illness, has meant I’ve lost my way in terms of productivity, and unfortunately my blog is one of the things to suffer

I have undertaken monthly reviews as well as wheel of life reviews for some time, however I felt I should be getting more out of these reviews to ensure I was working towards my goals. Although I think the wheel of life is a great tool to help develop your desired life balance, my concern was that it was subjective and therefore probably not a good monitoring tool.

New wheel of life method

To try and resolve this, during May 2009 I kept a note of the tasks and activities I completed, and plotted the number against each of my goal areas. Of course, it is not perfect as I have not been able to make a note of every single task, plus the number of tasks does not necessarily equal time spent on tasks or importance of tasks, but it is fairly quick and easy to keep track.

In the last month I feel that I’ve started to complete things for me as well as looking after my daughter, however progress has still been slow so this is a combined post reviewing personal progress as well as activity on my blog.

Blog – I am still slowly making it back to writing on my blog with one post in the last month. One of my biggest problems has been coming up with ideas for what to write about; my days (and therefore my head) are filled with baby and I’m not keen to turn this into a mother and baby blog. However, as I’ve found time to read other blogs during March as well as reviewing my goals I now have a list of topics; so fingers crossed you will see some more posts in the near future.  Despite this lack of posting I still had over 180 subscribers at the end of March, which is higher than this time year.

Every project needs to come to an end, but what do you do if not all the parties agree on the completion? My biggest project this year has been my pregnancy and unfortunately my baby and my body disagreed on when it should be completed.

My due date was the 10th November and as a good project manager my contractions started soon after 1 o’clock in the morning on 10th November. The mid wife came out to check on me about 6 o’clock and as my contractions were 3 minutes apart they suggested it was a good time to go over to the hospital.

However, my daughter disagreed and was not ready to be born and so refused to finish the rotation required to come out and my waters did not break.

I didn’t write a making progress report for June and I think that says a lot about the lull in enthusiasm I’ve been going through, but hopefully I’m on my back now. I’ve been helping out on several projects at work and it started off at a good level, but towards the end of July it was getting more difficult to juggle so many project in the available time. However having got away from it completely on my sailing holiday has given me the opportunity to re-evaluate my workload and I will be sitting down with my manager next week to discuss it.

Goals – I have a first draft of my goals that I put together a week or so ago. I have looked at them several times and discussed them with my husband and there are just two areas that I’m considering changing slightly.

The first thing that is noticeable from the shape of my wheel this month compared to last month is the improvement in the vision area. I have finally committed to paper the first draft of my high level goals. The interesting thing is it didn’t take that long in the end due to the work I had done earlier, however I guess I was scared about finishing them. I don’t think they are correct yet, however I am happy to give it ago and see how it feels; expect a post about it soon and I would be very interested in your comments.

Okay, its been a few months since I last did a wheel of life analysis, but I things are looking up in most of the categories.

I’ve been to see the dentist and chiropractor and they both say everything is looking good which is great news (I always seem to develop imaginary tooth pain a few weeks before a dentist appointment).

I’ve spoken to the majority of mine and my husband’s close family in the last few

weeks, plus we are travelling up to Yorkshire soon for a family reunion on my mother’s side where I will be able to catch up with aunts, uncles and cousins as well as some more distant relatives. It should be a good weekend and even better if we get some sun as a barbecue is planned.

May has not been as productive as I was hoping, as you my have noticed from my lack of posting. Due to the changes to my job, my work is now at a very pleasant level and I feel I am making good progress through my tasks, but I am also aware this could be temporary as two of my projects are currently paused. At home I have been very lethargic and unfocussed so although I have been completely tasks it is not very noticeable if you look around the house. We have spent both bank holiday weekends in Dorset, unfortunately they were both rainy, but we still managed to get some walks in.

Goals – Hmm, not much to say on this one really as I have not progressed it at all

April has been a strange month. It was quiet at the start as I had left one of my projects and was able to pass all outstanding actions on to someone else, however I have now started on an additional two projects so my workload now is as busy as ever, just over a larger number of projects. The good news is my energy levels seem to be picking up again after several weeks of very low energy so I am planning on increasing my productivity levels, particularly when I’m at home.

Goals – I have not progressed this at all during April, however now that I have started catching up tasks around the house this is quickly rising up my to do list and I intend to write a post on this during May

March has been strange a month because I’ve been on leave for two weeks and it is the last month of my company’s financial year so I’ve fluctuated between relaxation and being very busy. Plus, I think the hours I’ve been working over the last few months has finally got to me as I feel exhausted and I’m struggling to do much outside of the office, hence the lack of posts recently (I had intended do a lot of writing while I was in Japan, however their public transport system is so efficient that I did not find the time).

Goals – again, I have not progressed identifying my goals in the last month. I have a very first draft and I’m thinking of just posting it so that I start progressing this area again.