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Goals. January February March April June
Meta
I'm basically back on top of the meta things. I spent a while feeling like my to-doist list was getting somewhat out of hand, but now it's back under control again. More importantly, I've realised how to prevent that happening again (Basically I need to kick things I'm not going to get done into the future rather than letting them sit in 'overdue' because I'm kidding myself that they're going to get done that day.) On another meta note, these regular reviews of my goals are starting to give me a better sense of what's realisitic and what's not, and make it clear to me that I'm still spreading myself too thin and therefore doing lots of things a bit half-heartedly. To some extent that's a factor of who I am - I've got too many interests to ever focus too narrowly, but I'm increasingly realising that I might benefit from trying to do things consecutively rather than concurrently. As such, I think I'm going to switch from having a list of annual goals to having a longlist of lifetime goals, and then breaking it down into quarters rather than years, with each quarter having just one or two main foci for growth and development, plus some background maintenance things. Obviously I'm not going to be able to give this the thought it needs until after the wedding, so I shall carry on as I am for the next couple of months, but aim to switch over for the final quarter of 2019.
Finances
So after letting my May and June spending get completely out of control I did some more analysis of my spending and was slightly surprised to find that dining wasn't nearly as much of a driver as I was expecting it to be. I was overspent in that category, but not as much as some others. There were a couple of fairly big chunks of spending in Health and Gadgets that do feel more like one-offs rather than ongoing things, so that's somewhat reassuring. Anyway, I made a budget for July that had me spending slightly but not much less than my original annual target divided by twelve, and my actual spending was more than that, but not very much more, and I felt as though I was being slightly but not unsustainably restrained in my spending. My budget for August is lower still, but slightly artificially, because I'm treating wedding spending as outside my main budget, but because lots of this month is taken up with wedding stuff it gives me less opportunity to do other things that cost money (and the same will apply to September, since we're on honeymoon for the first nine days of it). I expect I'll still go slightly over budget because y'know, things always come up, but if I can keep both August and September as below my original target/12, and then the final three months within about 5% thereof I think my annual spending will come in at around halfway between last year's spending and my original target, which I think is now a reasonable compromise target.
I haven't been paying much attention to the income side of my financial goals, but am realising that I'm also somewhat unlikely to meet them - between surgery and weddings and so on I've been having quite a bit more time off work than last year, and my rates haven't gone up enough to compensate for that. Because of the way my current contract is structured it's a little bit difficult to track, and there may be some opportunity to increase my effective rates once I'm back to a less interrupted work pattern, but we'll see.
Faith and Church
I've made some slight improvements on finding time for prayer, but there's still a lot of room for improvement. The lay readership thing is a bit of a complicating factor here.
Health
Running in July did not go according to plan. I had a minor calf injury, and then a combination of being busy and lacking executive function meant I didn't get back into the habit once it started healing, and then I very foolishly made parkrun my first run in about three weeks and ran too fast when I wasn't completely healed, so set it off again. Which means I only did 48 miles in July, bringing my annual total to 644. I'm still on target for the year, but I've eaten up a lot of my slack, so I'm going to give up for now on the idea of getting far enough ahead that I can mostly switch to strength training instead. It would be quite nice to hit 750 miles by the end of August, and I think that's probably doable if I run most days, but I must be careful to take it gently, both in terms of speed and distance. This may mean that I don't manage my target of 40 parkruns for the year, since as noted, I'm very bad at running parkruns slowly, but a lot of the motivation for that target was more about starting the weekend with getting up early and going for a run, so I think I shall have a sub-target for August of doing that every Saturday whether it's parkrun or not.
Hobbies
I'm leaving this stuff on the back burner until post-wedding.
Meta
I'm basically back on top of the meta things. I spent a while feeling like my to-doist list was getting somewhat out of hand, but now it's back under control again. More importantly, I've realised how to prevent that happening again (Basically I need to kick things I'm not going to get done into the future rather than letting them sit in 'overdue' because I'm kidding myself that they're going to get done that day.) On another meta note, these regular reviews of my goals are starting to give me a better sense of what's realisitic and what's not, and make it clear to me that I'm still spreading myself too thin and therefore doing lots of things a bit half-heartedly. To some extent that's a factor of who I am - I've got too many interests to ever focus too narrowly, but I'm increasingly realising that I might benefit from trying to do things consecutively rather than concurrently. As such, I think I'm going to switch from having a list of annual goals to having a longlist of lifetime goals, and then breaking it down into quarters rather than years, with each quarter having just one or two main foci for growth and development, plus some background maintenance things. Obviously I'm not going to be able to give this the thought it needs until after the wedding, so I shall carry on as I am for the next couple of months, but aim to switch over for the final quarter of 2019.
Finances
So after letting my May and June spending get completely out of control I did some more analysis of my spending and was slightly surprised to find that dining wasn't nearly as much of a driver as I was expecting it to be. I was overspent in that category, but not as much as some others. There were a couple of fairly big chunks of spending in Health and Gadgets that do feel more like one-offs rather than ongoing things, so that's somewhat reassuring. Anyway, I made a budget for July that had me spending slightly but not much less than my original annual target divided by twelve, and my actual spending was more than that, but not very much more, and I felt as though I was being slightly but not unsustainably restrained in my spending. My budget for August is lower still, but slightly artificially, because I'm treating wedding spending as outside my main budget, but because lots of this month is taken up with wedding stuff it gives me less opportunity to do other things that cost money (and the same will apply to September, since we're on honeymoon for the first nine days of it). I expect I'll still go slightly over budget because y'know, things always come up, but if I can keep both August and September as below my original target/12, and then the final three months within about 5% thereof I think my annual spending will come in at around halfway between last year's spending and my original target, which I think is now a reasonable compromise target.
I haven't been paying much attention to the income side of my financial goals, but am realising that I'm also somewhat unlikely to meet them - between surgery and weddings and so on I've been having quite a bit more time off work than last year, and my rates haven't gone up enough to compensate for that. Because of the way my current contract is structured it's a little bit difficult to track, and there may be some opportunity to increase my effective rates once I'm back to a less interrupted work pattern, but we'll see.
Faith and Church
I've made some slight improvements on finding time for prayer, but there's still a lot of room for improvement. The lay readership thing is a bit of a complicating factor here.
Health
Running in July did not go according to plan. I had a minor calf injury, and then a combination of being busy and lacking executive function meant I didn't get back into the habit once it started healing, and then I very foolishly made parkrun my first run in about three weeks and ran too fast when I wasn't completely healed, so set it off again. Which means I only did 48 miles in July, bringing my annual total to 644. I'm still on target for the year, but I've eaten up a lot of my slack, so I'm going to give up for now on the idea of getting far enough ahead that I can mostly switch to strength training instead. It would be quite nice to hit 750 miles by the end of August, and I think that's probably doable if I run most days, but I must be careful to take it gently, both in terms of speed and distance. This may mean that I don't manage my target of 40 parkruns for the year, since as noted, I'm very bad at running parkruns slowly, but a lot of the motivation for that target was more about starting the weekend with getting up early and going for a run, so I think I shall have a sub-target for August of doing that every Saturday whether it's parkrun or not.
Hobbies
I'm leaving this stuff on the back burner until post-wedding.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 11:40 am (UTC)From:When considering finances I try to adopt the general rule of noting that it's not exceptional that some exceptional thing happened.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 01:15 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2019-08-06 07:27 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2019-08-07 09:41 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2019-08-07 03:55 pm (UTC)From: