Calendaring: Resistance is Futile

Last week I found blogger Kesha Bruce and I jumped into my long overdue review of my self journey. I mentioned the need of focus last week and I have been using Kesha’s words of wisdom to guide me through this needed venture. She first calls our attention to the need to have an End Game.

You need to know where you wanted to head off to before you hit the road. Since many of use spend a great deal of time doing many things because they are expected of us it can be a bit daunting to acknowledge just what it is that we want, let alone put it down on a piece of paper and map out a plan on how to get there.

I’m here to tell you that resistance is futile, and it may not be as painful as you believe.

My End Game started by determining ‘my’ income. After all, I work for myself, and who but me can figure that out.

I’m not going to tell you that committing this to paper was easy. All week long there were two work stations calling my name. One with the sewing machine, with a really fun new piece needing stitching...

And the other, with computer and calendars calling from the other side of the studio.

Then I found a quote by Ursula LeGuin –
“It is good to have an end to journey towards;
but it is the journey that matters in the end.”

This was the next nudge I needed (I did mention resistance, right?)

I took a look at my revenue streams – teaching/ art sales & commissions/ product sales, etc and mapped out the potential, including my personal goals in each of these areas.

On a roll now I could see how the marketing plans could be produced in accordance to the importance of each of these in turn…

Ok, here comes BIG resistance…
for me, it is really hard to plan for myself. Schedule myself!
Those that know me well might think I’m lying here, for I’m the ultimate planner, and a really good project manager…. But this is more daunting, it is a schedule to make it all happen!!!!  

Breath… time to go back to the smaller pieces.

This is what helped me this week. It is great, and totally needed, to have a big plan…. But it is the journey that matters in the end… the little pieces. Figure out the little pieces that you identify you need to have in place to get to the End Game. They all add up in the end, and in order to deal with the inevitable, finding one is working better than another, I built in review points.

Enough… this next week I’ll be working on my weekly schedule. Need to make sure there’s enough time in the day/week to get the things done that I want.