I love making resolutions for the new year.
Anyone who has ever been to a New Year's Eve party with me knows that I take my time to put my resolutions on pretty scrapbook paper, carefully chosen and decorated. I then hang that paper somewhere in my room where I will see it every day for the next year.
I also have a bad habit of making somewhat unrealistic resolutions, like the year I resolved to write a best selling novel and make a million dollars...in that single year. But this year I've done really well with my goals and kept them at a realistic level. I'm not going to share all of my resolutions, but I have made a goal that I want to talk about because it's the one I'm most excited about.
This year I have resolved to do things one at a time.
It sounds so simple, but it's something I really struggle with. In the past, while writing a blog post I would have a youtube video going, and probably be chatting with a friend or two, and maybe reading a book or playing a game too.
I would watch movies with my phone in my hand, and read books while trying to play a game. I would never really stop to 100% focus on the one task I was trying to accomplish, so I ended up with a lot of confused, half-finished projects that I never quite knew where to pick up.
So this year I've resolved to do things one at a time. So while I'm writing this blog post, that's all I'm doing. There's no video playing in the background; I'm not trying to cook dinner at the same time. I am sitting here giving my entire attention to the task at hand.
So far, it's gone wonderfully, and I really can see a difference in a lot of what I do. I've accomplished more, and kept better organized. I see a project, start it, and finish it. BAM.
Now, I know there are projects that cannot be finished in a single sitting, and that's fine too. I devote a certain amount of time to them, and when that time is up I can work on other things. For instance, I'll write on the next novella of the Bone Queen series for twenty minutes to an hour, and then I'll work on something else, but during that project time, that's all I do.
It's strange to think that actually stopping to just focus on one thing is a resolution I would make, but lately I've noticed how badly multi-tasking has served me. I get a little bit of work done on a lot of different projects but can never cross anything off my list. What good is that? Just a whole lot of spinning in place and going nowhere. So this year I resolve to forget multi-tasking and go back to focusing on a single project at a time!
What kind of resolutions are you making for this year (if any) and how's it going keeping them so far?