Month: January 2019

Regret vs Celebration

You’re probably very aware of just how challenging it is to try and keep up with multiple areas of your life all at the same time. Between your relationships, health, finances, work, hobbies, and personal time … how do you get it all done?

The truth is you can’t. Or at least, you can’t get it all done at the same time.

I love how David Allen says that you can do anything you want but you can’t do everything you want. And that is an extremely liberating mindset.

It is all too easy to feel regret over not having gotten everything done during a certain timeframe. (Such as at the end of a calendar year.)

But depending on what it is you’re feeling regret over, perhaps you should turn that regret into celebration instead.

Now, if someone had taken a significant amount of their time and squandered it on something that didn’t even matter to them, then, well, yes, I would regret that as well. That is a regret in having neglected to do something awesome by do something lesser-than instead.

But perhaps you’ve had to compromise something good so that you could do something great. Perhaps you didn’t get your book idea written last year because your free time was spent focusing on your family or your health…

You probably had several great things you wanted to do, but had to pick just a few of them. If so, then consider thinking of it from a place of celebration.

Instead of feeling regret over what you didn’t do, celebrate what you did do.

Regret vs Celebration

The Best Habit Apps For Your iPhone  →

If you’re looking to improve and/or start some new habits and routines, then one of the absolute best ways to help yourself stay steady is by tracking your progress.

That’s why, over on The Sweet Setup, we just updated our review for the Best Habit Tracking app.

I have a few daily and weekly habits that I track in my Baron Fig notebook as part of my Hybrid Productivity Method. But if you prefer a digital app for tracking your routines, then check out our review of the best habit tracking apps here.

The Best Habit Apps For Your iPhone

Want to Write More in 2019?  →

As I mentioned on Tuesday, one of my main areas of focus this year is on improving and giving more time to my writing and editing routine.

As you may know, Ulysses is the central spot for where I store all my notes, research, and other tidbits of inspiration. It’s also where I toss all my writing ideas, and it’s where I actually do all my writing. (Mostly on iPad these days.)

What’s so awesome about Ulysses is that it excells at each of these functions: it is ideal for capturing ideas and it’s also the best app there is for doing the writing.

If, like me, you’re looking to do more writing as we begin 2019, then you should check out Ulysses.

And, to help you get off to a great start, over on The Sweet Setup I put together seven links to the best articles, tips, tricks, resources, and other how-tos that we have.

Want to Write More in 2019?

How I Approach My New Year Goals

Don’t go crazy.

I approach my New Year Goals by first looking at the things in my life that are working well and the things that are not.

Then I choose a few small course corrections that will help move me more in the direction I want to go.

I do not overhaul my life on January first. Instead, I pick a few things that I know I can stick with. The compounding impact of small routines done regularly is so much more powerful than that one giant event.

Here are two actual examples for me in 2019 — one related to health and the other related to writing.

I have already been focusing quite a bit on my physical health in 2018. I finished out the year with 90 days in a row of perfect activity on my Apple Watch. I did that by focusing on one thing: doing one workout every single day.

Now that my workout routine has settled in, I’ll be taking the next step by also getting more focused on my diet. I don’t yet have the specifics, but I do know that I will begin taking small steps to improve what I eat to help give me more energy and long-term health beyond what I am currently eating.

My second example is with writing. In 2018 I spent quite a bit of time writing every day. But very little of my writing got published here to this site and, to be candid, that bums me out.

The slow publishing cadence here is not for shortage of time or ideas. I take time every day to write. And in my “ideas” folder in Ulysses has 213 notes that total up to roughly 35,000 words!

So the bottleneck with publishing to my site is that I have not been taking the time to turn my ideas and notes into edited blog posts that I can publish.

So, as I move into 2019, one thing I’ll be focusing on more is to get my writing out here onto the blog. Thus, my focus will be to spend at least 15 minutes per day editing my ideas and notes, so as to turn them into published posts.

While I’m not yet committing to a specific cadence of output here on this site, between you and me, I’d like to publish 100 posts in 2019 with one going up every Tuesday and Thursday.

How I Approach My New Year Goals