March To Do List

Planning...

"Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs." - Henry Ford

After struggling with it for many, many months and feeling consistantly burned out I made the decision to dedicate the last few months of 2012 to finding some way to bring balance to my chaotic school, dance, art, work and people filled life.  It was in December that I finally began to feel that I was beginning to achieve that goal and I stepped into 2013 with a greater sense of peace in my life.

There were of course some obvious things I needed to start doing like learning to say "No" to things; making sure I ate well, got plenty of rest, etc.; asking for assistance and learning to delegate; and more clearly defining my goals but there was also a great need for me to just start keeping track of what I had going on.   So it has become my habit during the first few days of the month to take time to sit down and review my calendar.

Today is that day.  I've a cup of tea, my breakfast, my iPhone, my pocket calendar and my wall calender.  Syncing them up is a manual process but a needed one for me.  The wall calendar gives me a high level view of what is ahead in the next few weeks. my pocket calendar allows me to make notes and list the steps that need to be taken to achieve a larger goal (I'm also very tactile and writing something down fixes it in my brain) and my iPhone, my Digital Della Street, will do the job of beeping, buzzing and reminding me of when deadlines are approaching.

I've come to actually enjoy these days when I sit and plan because I have found, like the quote says above, that large projects that can seem at first to be totally overwhelming become far less scary when broken down into their smaller parts.  As I make my notes, pencil in deadlines and create to do lists,  I no longer find myself in a place where I am dreading the coming weeks; instead I become excited about approaching events and ideas begin to bubble up in my head.  I can also look back over the previous month as a record of the goals I've achieved and go forward knowing that most of the time I am quite capable of achieving what I set out to do.

It is a good feeling.