sputniksumire

After doing some “tests” on my goal/destination list, I seem to have finally worked it out and locked it down.

My tools:

accompl.sh - this is one of those sites where you can make a list of things you want to do. But what’s great about it, is that after you’ve put everything that you think you could possibly want to do in 365 days, you have to commit to it by locking it in, and then track your progress from there. Even better, you can start anytime! 

This is especially great for me since I have a huge commitment problem. Working out the items reminded me that when I had a clear destination (e.g. go and live/study in Japan), it was pretty easy to evaluate choices along my way, because it was a little more obvious which ones would get me to there, then if I was just floundering around with a vague wish to leave my job at that time.

42goals - I needed something to track habits a bit more carefully though, accompl.sh is sometimes too big picture for some things I want to do. I love charts in general, and the psychological effect of not wanting to break a chain simply cannot be underestimated. Still, this is more for tracking, and *not* a daily to-do list, so for that, I’m relying on…

wunderlist - yeah. I really am a list maniac. This is good for daily tasks. Depending on how OCD you are about separating tasks for different projects, you can either just dump everything into the Inbox, or create different project lists and put tasks under each one.

The magic is that it is not overly complicated. I’ve been adding tasks whenever I have to, trying to assign to-do dates though sometimes the tasks don’t have any. Then each night, I glance through the “tomorrow” tab and maybe the full list, and star (prioritise) the tasks I need to do the next day. Then when I start my day, I only need to select the star button, and immediately I can see all the things I need to do for that day. 

I know some schools of thought don’t recommend mixing up your habit list and your to-do list, but since I’m really random and tend to get distracted easily, it has been a great help throwing certain habits into this list. One complaint I’ve seen about Wunderlist is that it doesn’t allow you to set recurring tasks. I actually like it this way. Once I’ve done the habit, I reset the to-do date to the next time I need to do it, and then uncheck the star, and it will automatically show up again when I want it to. 

Now to see how the next 365 days go!

While it seems obvious that we should start our New Year resolutions on the first of a new year (why else would they be called New Year resolutions hehe?) but I’ve always feel that change can be made any time, as long as we set easy-to-track parameters, so that we can do better follow-up and get what we want.

In any case, I’ve been hiding in my cave for the past couple of weeks, mostly moping around, but also thinking about what I might want to do, and doing a whole lot of astro-geeking… I’ve noted all the new moons and lunar returns in my chart and whatnot for the year ahead. Since there is a new moon coming up on December 25, and perfectly situated in my 6th house, I’m going to start making my changes then. 

Anyway, I never liked the word “resolution”. Somehow it just feels more like you are ending something, rather than starting something. So not with the vibe of the whole thing. “Destination” is a much better word imho, it’s tinged with the promise of something new, something different, and more in line with the idea of transformation. 

This week, I’ll try out some things out and give myself some time to test and tweak, and then come December 25, I’ll launch myself towards my new Destinations full throttle. Let’s hope I don’t run out of steam before the New Year, haha. 2012 had better turn out good!