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Moving On and Changing Focus

When I was younger I used to get the most awful growing pains.  Often they would come at night and leave me tossing and turning as I tried to find a position that would work so that I wouldn’t feel the pain.  Luckily, like most children, I grew out of the pain (and my clothes!) and settled into my new skin.  But I still remember those wakeful nights.

Classes at The Yarn Spot

I’ve been kept up with another type of growing pain these last few weeks – as I’ve come to face that the time Tinking Turtle needs to grow, and the time has to come from somewhere, and I have only so many hours in the day.  It is with bittersweet feelings that I’ve come to the conclusion that I can no longer fit working at The Yarn Spot into my weekly routine.  I need to focus my energy on the great things I have planned for my business.  It is not fair to The Yarn Spot that I work for them while my brain is somewhere else.

It would be remiss of me to not mention how much The Yarn Spot has done for me – letting me develop and hone my teaching style, helping me make connections in the industry and teaching me about many of the different things that go on behind the scenes of running a Yarn Retail Business.  Thank you very much to Victoria and Marianne for giving me so many different opportunities – and for being very forgiving when I made mistakes.

The Yarn Spot is most graciously hosting a party in honor of this transition at the store.  It will be occurring on January 31st from 4-6 pm.  I hope you can make it!

Getting Things Done

I’ve always been an Autumn girl.  Something about the colors changing, Halloween (which is my favorite holiday, hands down – over my birthday and Christmas), the crispness in the hair, apples, cider, pumpkins, changing leaves, mums and frost just strikes a chord in me.  It’s when school starts and things happen.  So it makes sense that I sympathize with starting the year in the Autumn.

Fall is the beginning of the year, and nobody call tell me likewise.

A small sampling of lists.

Which means that Fall is when I clean out closets, put on my jeans and get ready for the long haul.  When I went to school each year, it was the time of setting up my organizational system that would carry me through the schoolyear.

It seems I really can’t break that habit.  Over the weekend I cleaned out my closet, and committed a bunch of clothes to be donated.  I re-organized my remaining clothing (it needed it, the old system needed maintenance almost every other weekend, and it just wasn’t happening).

I also made lists.

Now, for those of you who don’t know, Michael and I have become big lists makers.  There’s solid proof that writing down your goals (ie making lists concrete lists) increases your likelihood to achieve desired outcomes.  Having someone to check up on you?  Makes it even more effective.  We have lists for everything.  A casual perusal around the apartment (I wasn’t even trying!) turns up lists for:

  • themed meal weeks
  • things for our apartment
  • wedding registry ideas
  • times to leave for work
  • places to go when driving to the farm
  • short term travel places
  • long term travel places
  • medium term travel places
  • designing monthly goals
  • designing quaterly goals
  • shopping list
  • shopping sub-list: wants for next week
  • meal plan list
  • weekly list Jen
  • weekly list Michael
  • Jen’s daily list
  • Weight Watchers Metrics List
  • Recipe Idea List

And best of all: a list for a list.  We decided, much like our weekly meal plan list (which we print out each week and fill out) we needed a packing list, of things we need to remember to do and to pack when we travel.  We also have a list of lists we need to make for this week.

Why all the lists?  Well, Michael and I hold each other accountable.  When we write things down, we are more likely to do them.  And if I’m going to be juggling a wedding and a business, I need to make sure certain things get done by the end of each week.

So what do you do to stay organized?  How do you make sure that things get done?