2013...Intentions

A facebook friend posted this gem the other day and I figured I could use it as a jumping off point for discussing my intentions for this year. Gonna let it sink in for a day and then I will discuss each section one entry at a time I think.

40 WAYS TO BETTER HEALTH IN 2013 -
1. Drink plenty of water.
2. Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a beggar.
3. Eat more foods that grow on trees and plants, and eat less food that is manufactured in plants.
4. Live with the 3 E’s — Energy, Enthusiasm, and Empathy.
5. Make time for meditation and reflection
6. Play more games.
7. Read more books than you did in 2012.
8. Sit in silence for at least 10 minutes each day.
9. Sleep for at least 7 hours.

Personality:
10. Take a 10-30 minutes walk every day —- and while you walk, smile.
11. Don’t compare your life to others’. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
12. Don’t have negative thoughts or things you cannot control. Instead invest your energy in the positive present moment.
13. Don’t over do; keep your limits.
14. Don’t take yourself so seriously; no one else does.
15. Don’t waste your precious energy on gossip.
16. Dream more while you are awake.
17. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
18. Forget issues of the past. Don’t remind your partner with his/her mistakes of the past. That will ruin your present happiness.
19. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone. Don’t hate others.
20. Make peace with your past so it won’t spoil the present.
21. No one is in charge of your happiness except you.
22. Realize that life is a school and you are here to learn. Problems are simply part of the curriculum that appear and fade away like algebra class but the lessons you learn will last a lifetime.
23. Smile and laugh more.
24. You don’t have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.

Community:
25. Call your family often.
26. Each day give something good to others.
27. Forgive everyone for everything.
28. Spend time with people over the age of 70&under the age of 6.
29. Try to make at least three people smile each day.
30. What other people think of you is none of your business.
31. Your job won’t take care of you when you are sick. Your family and friends will. Stay in touch.

Life:
32. Do the right things.
33. Get rid of anything that isn’t useful, beautiful or joyful.
34. Forgiveness heals everything.
35. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
36. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
37. The best is yet to come.
38. When you awake alive in the morning, don’t take it for granted – embrace life.
39. Your inner most is always happy. So, be happy and ENJOY LIFE!

Last but not least:
40. Grow your relationship with God

Ugh....that last one is awkward and definitely deserves its own post...can't wait for that.

I just finished scheduling my week. Now that I have a tablet I would really like to get the most out of the google system. All of this technology at my fingertips should help me to accomplish many of my goals for the year that deal with personal growth. Managing my time better will certainly go a long way towards getting that done.

"how I broke my snooze habit:
I placed my alarm clock on other end of bedroom, far out of reach. I also changed it from a beeping tone to a very annoying music station and turned the volume way up. This way I could not just smash snooze and roll over and I certainly couldn't just ignore it because it was playing shitty music at an unbearably loud volume. The only way to make it stop was to get out of bed and walk 10 feet to the alarm clock. 
I think I actually broke the habit pretty in about 10 days, but I kept it across the room for another month or two just to reinforce to my body that once I'm up, I'm up.
after a couple months, I moved the alarm back bedside and just continued to get up when the alarm went off.
also, I agree with others that if you set your alarm for the time you actually must wake up, rather than 10-20 mins beforehand, you will stop enabling yourself to snooze."

Yeah I think I addressed this. I actually can get up several times to hit snooze even though the obnoxious alarm is in the bathroom and stumbling into the shower or even splashing cold water on my face should be the plan. Seems pretty simple in theory and I just need to man up and stop snoozing. I set the alarm that early because I have things I would like to do in the morning that will result in a better start to the day. Setting it for right before I need to leave is not an option here if I want to improve.

"Random thought: your writing needs to be WAY more concise. You could say the same thing with half the space"

When I am trying to write well...like for a technical writing assignment...or a work email or something...I can do this fairly easily but I take time to think about what I am saying. That's not what I am looking for here. This is supposed to be reflective therapy. A reflection of what is going my head in regards to what has happened during my day and in the world around me. Until I get used to doing it on a daily basis and the process is refined I will be pretty verbose. I understand where you are coming from though and I appreciate the comment.

"i agree with allen, man. the only way to start any of those things is just to do them. where does your free time go so that you can't just spend an hour working on that crap? i think blogging everyday might be a stretch. maybe try for a weekly update? so you can see how much you've progressed over the week. day-to-day might not yield enough positive results to keep you motivated.

also, it IS nice that bing's being so nice. im hoping that maybe if he keeps it up, he'll become sincere about it, instead of ironic."

I agree 100%. Just need to man up. I will not succeed in life accepting the amount of laziness and lack of motivation I have had up to this point. I am very lucky to be where I am at and I need to take advantage of the situation instead of just doing enough to get by and hoping everything falls the way I want it to. If I can't manage my day well enough to allow time for this blog everyday then whats the point. As it starts I think I need to do it everyday to create the habit and ensure I am doing my best to change my ways. Eventually I could see doing it weekly as once everything is going the way I would like it to there may be less to blog about. I enjoy Bing being nice as well. Whether it is ironic or not it is a nice change of pace from the normal TMZ attitude. I look forward to it continuing.

Here's to hoping.

Don't You Do It!

Today definitely was not as productive as I could have hoped for as the only real bright spot was showing up to work before 8am at 7:45. The lab hours are from 8-4 but in recent months my days are a lot closer to start time of 8:15-9am with a closing time of 5-6pm. That is why it is hard for me to show up at or before 8am. I have a lot of leeway. Leeway has never been a good thing for me. Probably one of the reasons I have trouble progressing as a manager but I will leave that for another time. Time-wise I am not responsible for customer interaction so it is not mandatory that I am there to answer phones at 8am. Being on the production side of things allows for somewhat of a "just get the job done no matter the hours" sort of mentality. Which is kinda nice I must admit. However I really feel like my productivity increases when I get there earlier. It usually means that I got up without snoozing for 1-2 hours which leaves me fresh in the morning while not rushing and having to wake up at work. Snoozing might be the most confusing trait of mine. There is zero logic behind it. There are zero benefits to it. It is something I have done my entire adult life even though I am aware there is no benefit while recognizing the downside of leaving me lethargic to begin the day often setting a bad tone for the day. It is not just one alarm either. More often than not it is my phone alarm next to the bed in addition to an iHome alarm in the bathroom that gets really fucking obnoxious really quickly. I have been known to snooze both alarms for over an hour...yes that means getting out of bed every ten minutes to hit that big ole snooze button on the iHome. It really boggles my mind as to why I do it. So naturally if i have any chance of defeating my laziness this year the snoozing must go. Plus going in earlier leads to leaving earlier (not always) which usually leads to a more productive night.

Though I arrived a tad early I wasn't as productive at work as I would have liked though. I finished 2 of 8 tasks I had set for myself at the beginning of the day. This is often occurs during the beginning of the month when I have month wrap-up activities to take care of...never a big fan of those. This month is the biggest whammy of them all because a year end wrap-up is required of me in addition to preparing for the next management review (required by ISO) which is coming up later in January. The natural lazy tendency is to procrastinate as long as possible on these tasks until there is an external pressure (the boss in this case) to get them done. To buck this trend I will get the monthly wrap-up finished tomorrow and get started on, if not finish, the management review preparation. I doubt this will get done tomorrow as it will include year-end wrap-ups, 2013 goal-setting, review of lab performance based on documentation that may or may not be completed yet, and some progress reports. Let's just get it started. Of course the boss will not be in until next Tuesday so in the back of my mind I know nothing needs to be done or even worked on until that time. But fuck that...we are getting this shit done by the end of the week.

I also have a new guy coming in tomorrow to replace Trey in the part-time college student position (read: 18ish hours). We are trying to develop a relationship with Lonstar Montgomery where they offer up a young and motivated pool of budding scientists and we pluck one or two out for a semester to help out with lab odds and ends. Trey worked out really well so I hope this new guy does too. Personnel priority #1 will be handled if that happens. At the end of the year I had a good talk with the Johns regarding personnel issues I have and they prioritized them for me. There are 3...maybe 4. I would like to handle #3 ASAP but I have to handle 1 and 2 first of course. I am an impatient person. #2 will be handled in the coming weeks so I will take solace in that. Pretty ridiculous given the number of people in the lab. I look forward to having a stronger workforce around me by the end of the year.

An end of day push left me still not leaving work until after 5. This put me home after 6 at which point I vegged out. FAIL. But hey we got the blog done at least right?! Even if it is without the new year goals and intentions...they are coming I promise. You need them. I need them. Still somehow getting to bed late as well. AND I didn't workout at all. ARGH! What a way to kill the day...

By this time tomorrow I will have:
Been sleeping for an hour and a half.
Blogged
Started getting my budget planning together.
Started setting some goals for the year.
Finished cleaning the downstairs.
Worked out.
Worked a successful 8-9 hour day involving getting a new employee started, finishing monthly reports, and starting management review preparation.
Arrived to work before 8.
Completed a small morning warm-up.
Awoken to the alarm and not hit the snooze bar once.

Here's to hoping.

Life starts now....in 2013

Kind of a late start with this one so I must be brief. Had a really productive day of cleaning the bedroom and bathroom while unpacking as well. Started the day with a to-do list and actually got some of the items checked off. Cleaning stuff took a lot longer than planned so the items I did not hit were:

Cleaning the downstairs
Working on the budget
Setting goals for the week/month/year
Extensive blog post covering the goals

I am making an effort with this small post though so that makes me happy. In the coming days I will go over the things I would like to accomplish in 2013 and maybe do a little reflection on 2012. The reflection will be lacking as I tend to forget a lot of things it would seem. Hopefully in one year I will be able to use this blog...among other things... to do some serious reflecting on how successful I was in eradicating laziness from my life. Today was a wonderful start...I even got a run in using some sweet new cold weather gear I received from my cousin Tricia. Creating a to-do list seemed to be a good start to the day and I plan on keeping it up for personal and work means.

Here's to hoping.