Last year I read the book Finish by Jon Acuff, and man, it spoke to me.

In it he talks a lot about how people set goals, and some of the reasons they get derailed and never finish their goals. Of course there are a lot of reasons things don’t go as planned, but one of the biggest (and the one I related to the most) goes something like this: I have a goal of listing a minimum of 12 new items per day. I am trucking along, getting my listings up and feeling really good about it, but then life happens and one day I just can’t get it done. I let it derail me, and instead of dusting myself off and starting again tomorrow I feel discouraged that my streak is over and less motivated to try again. And before I know it a month has slipped by without me being consistent and I feel frustrated and defeated.

One of the strategies Acuff suggests in combating this is: Cut your goal in half.

I love it. It’s brilliant.

Making the base goal so much more attainable elevates my motivation to try and achieve and keep achieving. It’s the marathon-not-a-sprint or tortoise-and-the-hare mindset. Keep plugging away, possibly at a slower pace, but being able to attain the goals builds momentum and I’m more likely to end up where I want to be, even if it takes a bit longer than I want it to.

In my life there are three areas that I always feel I am striving to do better.

#1 – make more money
#2 – manage my health
#3 – home organization

{Of course there are other priorities as well, such as my family, but I feel like I already do a good job in that area. I don’t feel I need to make a more concerted effort to stay on track.}

These are my “cut the goal in half” bare minimum daily to-dos that I keep track of in a memo on my phone.
Work related:
eBay – create at least 6 new listings.
Poshmark – crosslist 4 items
Mercari – crosslist 4 items
Health related:
Track my food/exercise on the Lose It app.
Exercise for at least 20 minutes/day.
Home organization:
Focused 30 minutes of organization/purging/cleaning.
Bonus:
Add at least one post on my kid blog. (Mostly just for the grandparents and for me to eventually print out in lieu of a photo album. I am super behind.)

Do I have other goals I want to get done every day? Of course. Do I want to get more than just six items listed on eBay every day? Absolutely. But for some reason instead of having a huge goal in front of me (where I will eventually flounder) having these small bite-size goals to work on each day keeps me really motivated.

I know these goals don’t look like much. Some days they are all knocked out in the morning. Some days I finish up just before midnight. I also give myself the weekends off from trying to meet all of the goals, which helps me push through the weekdays – knowing a weekend is coming. My hope is that it will be a recipe for consistency and sustainability.

Do you have any specific goals this year? How are you going about attaining them? I would love to hear about it!

For the last week or so my sales have been steady and in the ballpark of where I want them to be. Which is great! Unfortunately I was sick last week and worked almost not at all for two days, and about half speed the rest of the time. Which is not so great. Any time my listing drops off I fear my visibility and sales will drop off too.

I really need to finish off this month with strong sales. In addition to all of the normal financial obligations I am trying to meet, I also purchased airfare for my husband and FIL to fly to Pittsburgh in a couple months to see a Steelers game. The Steelers are my FIL’s favorite team and he has never seen them before on their home field. This has been a trip my husband has been wanting to take with his dad for years. My husband is turning the big 4-0 in a few months, and I figured that was as good as an excuse as any. So off they will go! And I would like to pay for the trip with eBay-made-money.

So my goals for the upcoming week are as follows:

• List 12 new items/day on eBay.
• Try to have the 12 new listings completed before 8 p.m.
• Cross post 5 listings onto PM.
• Spend 1 hour/day (5 of the 7 days) organizing my storage room.

It doesn’t sound like a whole lot, but two days next week are inservice days from school for my boys, so it will feel like I only have a 3 day workweek. Ah well. And so it goes, we soldier on.

What are your current goals? I would love to hear about them!

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I have moved into a new season of my life, both literally and figuratively.

For the past many years I have kind of had the best of both worlds. When my oldest son was born (now almost 12 years ago) I was able to stay home with him. This was really important to me, especially since we don’t have any family who lives nearby to help out. I know how lucky I was to have the choice to stay home. I was also lucky that I was able to move from my full-time job as a librarian into a substitute position. The great thing about the sub position was that I had total control over when I would work. When my boys were young this limited me to working on days my husband was off, which worked out well. As they have gotten older and are now in school full time I started working more and more, and during the last school year I was usually working 5 days a week.

That was, until the middle of June, when I found out that all sub positions city-wide were being eliminated. There were other departments in the city affected by this, but it hit the library especially hard – 18 people lost their jobs.

I wasn’t entirely sure how to feel. Part of me was sad, for sure. I had worked there for 17(!) years. But there was also a little part of me that has always wondered what I could do if I wasn’t trying to split my time between my work there and my work at home.

So, I enjoyed July and August with my boys being out of school, working from home. During those couple months I was still trying to decide if I needed to try and find another job, or if I should stick with online sales. In fact at the end of August I was in the middle of filling out an application (for a job that only comes open once a year) when I realized that I really, really did not want the job. What I wanted was to give myself the next 9 months to work from home and see what I could do when my time was really my own.

So of course I talked to my husband, and he was on board. The gist of what he said was – as long as we are able to pay our bills at the end of the month, we’re good. Do whatever makes you happy. Yup, he’s awesome. So I didn’t apply for the job, and I’ve given myself nine months (now down to eight) to see what I can do when my time is my own.

So far, this is what I have done. (This was as of 10 minutes ago, as I type.)

I have been working and working and working to get my “compared to same period a year ago” back up to 0. Because I was working so much at the library there were many months that my sales were 50% less than they had been the year before. I am soooo close to that goal! (Of 0%, ha. But we’ve got to start somewhere, right?)

I have many more goals that I am working towards, but that is my life right now in a nutshell.

I would love to hear about how the work-life balance is going for you. Do you have a good routine, or is it ever changing? Please share!