Monday, January 20, 2014

Focus for 2014





Every year I set goals.  I write them on a 3x5 card.  Post them on the board.  Let them marinate.  Sometimes they are fulfilled, but often not.

This year I did something different.  I took a more minimal approach and chose words to represent what I want to focus on this year.  Here are my words.

Strength
Finances
Hackschooling
Create beauty
Contentment

On their own, these words don’t say much.  They certainly don’t communicate any significance to others.  Here is a bit of the back story.

Strength. Physical and mental.
 The mechanisms: Physical: daily exercise; cycling 3x/week, running 3x/week, yoga, body weight exercises, weights. Train for specific races and events.  Mental: daily Khan Academy, scripture memorization, Latin. 

Finances. Increase awareness of our personal finances. Increase income. Increase savings. 
The mechanisms: You Need a Budget software. Smart Passive Income blog.

Hackschooling. Develop creative ways to engage myself in learning and researching and writing. This is for personal development as well as professional development for Classical Conversations Challenge II.    
The mechanisms: Classes and seminars (both live and online), experimenting, reading.

Create Beauty.  This encompasses art, gardening, cooking, hospitality, home repair. 
The mechanisms: currently undefined.

Contentment. Different than happiness - more like living with joy.
The mechanism: Daily gratitude. Prayer. Intentional, focused, undistracted time with my family members. 


This year will be more about being and doing, and less about having.  I’m looking forward to it.