productivity

Accountability

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And Why It’s So Important

Photo by Renáta-Adrienn on Unsplash

For a long time, my life wasn’t my own, and revolved around someone else. I’m not saying this to try and get sympathy, or because I resent it, but it’s just the truth. This is the life of a carer. This was my lot.

The thing is that now; as I am becoming accustomed to not being a carer, I am having to re-learn what I’m doing with regards my own personal goals, and I am having to re-learn how to structure my time now that I’m not having to fit things in around my caring responsibilities.

Just lately, a very good friend of mine began studying again. She has been using timers to make sure that she is getting a certain amount of studying done per week. This seems to really be working for her, and so I decided to try a similar sort of thing.

However, I have found that working with a weekly target doesn’t seem to work for me. If I have a bad day, I can talk myself into the idea that there’s no possible way of my meeting my targets, and so I give up and start again.

So, this time, I am trying the same tactics, but I’m totalling up my hours for the whole month, and I’m hoping that this way, I can actually stick at it.

Accountability is so important here, especially with us writers, whose only goal setters are ourselves.

So, I’m posting this here as a practice in accountability, and this is my promise to myself that I will write another post on the 20th of June, where I will hopefully be able to tell you that I have succeeded and hit all of my targets.

If you’d like to get updates from me once a week, you can click here… 🙂

Li Carter is a writer, artist and crafter. She lives in South Wales, UK, with her family, and five rescue dogs. She’s on Twitter @rbcreativeli , Facebook: Rainbow Butterfly Creative, and Instagram @rainbowbutterflycreative and is the author of My Only True Friend: The Beginning. She is currently working on a new series titled The QuickSilver Chronicles. She is the original Rainbow Butterfly, and wants to fill an ever darkening world with a little bit of beauty and creativity.

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New Year, New You

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New Year, New You

And why we do it…

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’ve probably heard this phrase once, at the very least. New year’s resolutions. A new beginning. A fresh start. These are all things that we associate with the new year. These are all things that we think of as being good things to do.

To some extent, I can understand, and I can honestly say that I don’t know of one person who hasn’t set at least one goal this year. I know I have. I refuse to call mine resolutions, though. I’ve found that in the past, if I call something a resolution, then it is the quickest way for me to give up when I come up against the first hurdle.

Instead, I prefer to set goals, which I will work on for the next year. I know it’s effectively pretty much the same thing, but for some reason, goals work better for me than resolutions. I think maybe it’s the fact that a resolution is so synonymous with New Year’s. I sort of feel that if I’m not working at that resolution every day from the first of January, then I may as well not bother, whereas if I’m working at a goal, then it is about crossing the finish line by the end of the year, rather than the starting point itself.

The thing is, we as humans are always seeking to better ourselves, and that can be a good thing and a bad thing. I can almost see you shaking your heads, wondering what I mean by it being a bad thing… what I mean is that some of us will set goals (or resolutions, or whatever you choose to call them) that are both unrealistic and unreachable, and that isn’t a good thing, because we set ourselves up, right at the start, for failure.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, I understand the need to set goals, and agree wholeheartedly with trying to better myself, but this year, unlike those that have been, I am striving to not set goals that are unattainable, because the quickest way to fail is when you set yourself up to do so.

So, by all means, set goals, and make resolutions, but please, make them attainable, because to do otherwise will only serve to make you beat yourself up when you cannot reach that unreachable goal.

Li Carter is a writer, artist and crafter. She lives in South Wales, UK, with her family, and five rescue dogs. She’s on Twitter @rbcreativeli , Facebook: Rainbow Butterfly Creative, and Instagram @rainbowbutterflycreative and is the author of My Only True Friend: The Beginning. She is currently working on a new series titled The QuickSilver Chronicles. She is the original Rainbow Butterfly, and wants to fill an ever darkening world with a little bit of beauty and creativity.