Operation Stash-Down

 

Last month, I spent a week thoroughly cleaning and reorganising my workroom so that I could actually get to all the shelves, and not have my back to the door. I even made space to fit a skinny bookshelf (I can finally have all my books out where I can reach them. It's been more than seven years since that last happened).

Last week, I watched one of my favourite YouTubers issue their now-annual "January is for working on The Pile" challenge. I considered my Piles (what a phrase) and decided this was an excellent use for the rest of January. I went through the mending pile, adding and subtracting as necessary, and updated the running list I keep of the things in there (it's the only way to stop things from disappearing into the aether). I tidied up the cabbage patch, taking the opportunity to go through a few boxes that were stored outside the workroom and sort their contents into piles.

Yesterday, I looked around my workroom (it had once again gone from clean and tidy with actual floor space, to One Big Trip Hazard within half a day), and decided that I have too much bloody stuff.

This was almost completely clear twelve hours ago.
L-R, T-B: for coleslaw (green), cabbage once deconstructed (yellow), actual recycling (blue), and rag rug bits (red).

2024: New Year, (some) New Goals

An Unnecessarily In-Depth Explanation of How I Set Yearly Goals

It's a new year, which means that for me, it's time for a new set of annual goals. (These are NOT resolutions. Resolutions are fuzzy and vague, usually cliché things like "lose weight" or "be happier" or "achieve world peace". Goals are things that you can actually aim at, and with enough practice, hit.)

I started formally setting and tracking yearly targets a few years ago, and while I won't call it the cure to all that ails me, it's certainly been a helpful practice. And hey, 'tis the season for everyone's "how I set goals" posts, so who am I to rock the boat?

The TL;DR

I usually start this process sometime in December, whenever the urge to wrap up the current year and look towards the new one starts to itch me. (Incidentally, this is almost the exact same process I use when doing monthly goals, just with less introspection/review.)

It goes something like this:

• Review the areas of my life and how things went over the last year.
• Review last year's goals - what I hit, what I didn't, what needed changing part way through the year when it became apparent I'd picked an over-ambitious target/something I didn't actually care about, that kind of thing.
• Do a brain dump of all the things I want to do next year. Delegate them by life area.
• Refine the brain dump over a few days, until I have a reasonable number of targets to aim for over the coming year.
• Break those targets down into the things I'll need to do to actually reach the goal I'm aiming for.