Working a Long-Range Plan

Image Credit: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Chapter Two
In which we discuss how to get there from here.

Yesterday, I had lunch with a dear friend who is also a former co-worker – in fact, my former office-mate. We talked about our future plans. I told her that I am feeling this pull to go back to school. “For what?” she asked.  

“I’m not sure yet,” I said. “Communications, maybe?”

She made a face and snorted. “Don’t waste your money with that, you’re already a great communicator,” she said.

“But I want to learn more of the tech side of things,” I said. “So I don’t need to go back to school full-time, just take a class here and there.”

“Yeah, try looking at some extension courses,” she said. “And I can connect you with a couple of writers who are freelancing and doing really well. One in particular, L – she is really easy to talk to, and she can tell you how she segued from freelancing part-time into a career as a full-time writer.”

It all sounds so simple, in a way. But I know I have to take one step at a time as part of a long-term plan to transform what my work life looks like now.

STRETCH.  

I am telling you this because I expect you to hold me to it, blogosphere. Don't let me shirk!

Permission to Fail

It is still early in the year yet, and folks are still kind of riled up about resolutions, and achieving things, and highfalutin’ aspirations about making themselves better people and whatnot. In that spirit (and I by no means seek to denigrate such folk, as I can sort of count myself among them), I present to you “Fail Fast, Fail Often,” a recent article on the Daily Beast. (Well, actually, not so much an article as it is an excerpt of the book by the same name.)

The premise of this piece is that we too often get bogged down in details instead of taking action. The authors exhort us to do things badly, as fast as we can, because if we increase the quantity of our output we will stop worrying about the quality of the output – and yet, and YET! Somehow mysteriously letting go of worrying about the little details often results in higher quality output. At least that’s how I’m interpreting it.

There is something to be said for this, at least for me, because I am one of those “getting bogged down” people, with the result that I can too easily talk myself out of doing something because it will require Too. Much. I convince myself that I don’t know Enough to do said thing, so I get bogged down in learning more about it, and putting off doing something while I try to backfill what I think I need to know. And then after I have made two or three steps and realize the great enormity of all there is yet to learn, it becomes a monumental task and I get caught up in something else and never get back to it.

What? What? Is that really the best way to go about things? Clearly not.

Where I get bogged down is in expending time and energy on an idea that isn’t going to work. They key is to determine if the idea is workable. It is not always clear or obvious. But I like the idea of kind of throwing myself into it quickly, and seeing if it’s all that and a bag of chips, as I imagined it to be, or whether it’s simply a no go. And then moving on to the next new shiny thing.

So again, for 2014 it’s all about that one little word for me:  STRETCH. Get out of the comfort zone. Do things a little differently. Or maybe a lot differently. As the authors say,

You can’t know what something is like, how you will feel about it, or what will result from it until you actually are doing it.

It’s pretty simple actually. Let’s get stretchin’!

one little word 2014

Well, hello and Happy Twenty-Fourteen!

I hope your holidays were spectacular. Over here in Blah Blah Land, we were felled by nasty colds the week before Christmas. By 3 pm Christmas Day, the kids were still not out of their pajamas and any chance of us getting to my in-laws' for dinner was twisting in the wind, as neither Sweet Dub nor I could summon the gumption to peel ourselves off the couch. We actually did not do much of anything until the weekend. You'd think I could sit down at the keyboard at least once but obviously I was just too far gone for even that!

Moving on: here we are, and I have spent some precious moments doing a bit of a "Year in Review" in my journal and setting some priorities (NOT resolutions, you know how I am) for the coming year. I also caught up a bit on my blog reading and ran across the "one little word" concept, thanks to Elise over at enJOY it. I think I vaguely remember it from last year, when I considered it but decided then to create a mantra rather than just one word. I am a late adopter.

At any rate, one little word is a concept originally developed by Ali Edwards. She asks:

Can you identify a single word that sums up what you want for yourself in [the coming year]? 

It can be something tangible or intangible. It could be a thought or a feeling or an emotion. It can be singular or plural. The key is to find something that has personal meaning for you.

The idea is to find a word that you want to guide your steps over the next year. One little word didn't come to me right away -- I considered and rejected several, and then: STRETCH popped into my mind. Ba-bam, that's the one.

Why STRETCH? Because in 2014:

I want to move my body more.
I want to expand my horizons.
I want to get outside of my comfort zone.
I want to increase and enhance my skills.
I want to move beyond my current parameters.

I don't, however, want to increase my waistline. STRETCH pants are not the angle I'm going for. (Although I did get two new pairs of yoga pants for Christmas and they are bomb.)

How's about you? You got one little word?