In a recent post titled Don’t Be a Stranger, I wrote about my being a bit more complex than I tend to admit to others or accept for myself. I usually think (and write) about how I like to wing it. This applies to certain areas of my life like cooking. In other areas though I keep a pretty rigid schedule and this keeps me on top of my work life and helps to ensure I remember to have a social life and some fun in my week. Interestingly enough the ability to be flexible helps me with winging it and scheduling it. Not simple at all!
I keep a pretty tight routine when it comes to my sleep. I tend to hit the bed around 9-9:30, write in my gratitude journal and read for a bit. Then lights out as I wake up before 6:00am most days. I go through periods of time where I don’t sleep well and have found that my sleep routine helps keeps these times at bay. When you don’t sleep well, you learn to value its positive benefits. Occasionally though 9:00pm rolls around and I am nowhere near my comfy bed and getting stressed out about it will not help me catch more Z’s! Planning ahead keeps these occasions to a minimum and when they do occur, I am learning to go with the flow by being flexible.
I love to wing it in the kitchen by looking up a bunch of recipes and then sort of following one to create dinner. I easily substitute ingredients and don’t spend time thinking about if it will work. When it is just my honey and I for dinner, the only planning I do in advance is to pull something out of the freezer. But when we have company, my desire to wing it is tempered by my need to schedule time for shopping, prep work and cooking.
Over the holidays we had company and I offered to cook several meals for all of us. Trust me, I did a lot of scheduling and just a bit of winging it! I was also working my flexibility muscle as this group is hard to pin down for a start time! I must admit, they were pretty darn flexible too!
Physical fitness is one are of my life that I have always preferred to wing it. I don’t belong to a gym and don’t enjoy exercise equipment or group classes. For most of the year, I am incredibly active and my trusty fitness tracker tells me I routinely get my 10,000 steps in per day. Frequently I hit over 15,000 during my yardwork days. But this time of year, winging it isn’t working for me. My steps are below 10,000 unless I really push myself and my muscles are weakening due to inactivity!
So this year as yardwork wound down, I started to schedule 2 short exercise periods into every day. I remembered that 5 minutes is easy so that is what I do! I decided I would d0 3 planks every day with the goal of increasing them to at least 60 seconds each. I also decided I would stretch for 5 minutes or lift weighs for 5 minutes every day. I scheduled these activities on my new Google Calendar and that was all I needed to do to make exercise part of my day.
It worked! Since I began tracking my planks – I have completed them 89% of days. For weights and stretching – I have completed them 95% of days. I have these activities written in my calendar and when I complete the activity I simply change the color from yellow to brown. That way it is easy to see my progress every month.
I have used the same calendar and the same 5 minute trick for working on my blog since the middle of November and have been successful for 93% of days. This has allowed me to post twice per week instead of once and that help me get closer to reaching a goal. I tried this earlier in the year but didn’t stick to it. I think the simple step of changing the color gave me a visual reward that the task was done! It is like crossing something off of a “To Do List” and I do love to do that!
There are at least 2 different ways to accomplish any task. You can wing it or you can schedule it. The path you take is up to you but if you aren’t getting it done; be flexible and try the other approach. Maybe in 2020, I will schedule time to wing it! As long as I can be flexible with others, with myself and with my time; I will be happy! Like I said, I am not as simple as I like to think. Happy New Years. I hope you spend as much time in your happy place as you can handle!
Lake Girl
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay