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In 2009 I got married, bought a house, sat on three boards, volunteered on multiple committees, continued my master’s degree and got a puppy.  To sum it up, it was hectic.  At the beginning of the year I sensed my year was going to be a bit crazy, so I set some personal and professional strategies for myself.  Those strategies were:

Personal Strategies

• Find personal balance.
• Get married.
• Set time aside for personal creativity.
• Focus my civic engagement.
• Make my blog worth writing for.
• Complete my masters without going crazy.

Professional Strategies

• Find balance at work.
• Integrate what I am learning in my masters program.
• Don’t be so hard on myself and don’t take it personally.
• Stay connected with my growing network.
• Learn something from each of my coworkers.
• Put my thoughts about nonprofit systems on paper.

Over the course of the year, many strategies got left behind and others became habit.  I knew when I developed these strategies; it might not be realistic for me to follow through on all of them.  I set too many strategies and set my self up to fail.  This year I am combining my strategies into three “life strategies”, one’s I am confident I can accomplish.  These strategies are meant to be a sort of New Year’s resolution I am hoping to follow through for a long time.

My Life Strategies for 2010 are:

Wake up one hour earlier. I have to finally admit, my typical wake up time is not until after 7 am.  Sleep has been my sanctuary, because of my over worked days.  My hope is that changing my wake up time to an hour earlier will give me more time to get things done around the house in the morning, go to the gym, blog, or what ever else I would like to do in the morning.  I also believe my oversleeping is leading to my drowsiness in the mornings, and if I narrow my sleep time to 7 hours a night I am hoping to have more energy.  My sleeping sanctuary will be replaced with exercise, a calm morning breakfast before work, or time to write before handing my brain over to my workplace. All these options sound much better then one more hour of unproductive sleep each morning.

Keep a positive attitude. This strategy may seem a little “pie in the sky”, but it definitely feels worth it.  With my busy schedule and hectic workplace, it is very easy to become negative and stressed about everything.  This commitment to staying positive will give me a reason to stop myself from becoming negative and give me a chance to be positive in each situation.  I am also using this strategy to learn from each of my experiences.  I don’t seem to learn anything when I am only looking at the bad side of things.

Before taking on anything new, ensure it is good for me and my family. My new marriage, along with my string of baggage commitments, has made balance hard over the past year.  I have only been married eight months, so there is a lot of learning to do, but one immediate lesson has been comparing my volunteer commitments with how much quality time I spend at home.  Before I got married I was on three boards, in leadership positions on two of them, along with three more volunteer committees.  This is too much, even for a single person, especially while working on my master’s degree.  Since April, I have narrowed my commitments down to the three boards, one of which will be ending soon.  Going forward I am only sticking to the commitments I currently have and will only be adding to them if the outcome will be positive for both my career, self interests, and my family.  This is going to be especially hard for me.  I am very easily distracted by the idea of working with amazing people on great projects.  No more, I have a life time to try everything I want to do.

What strategies are you implementing in 2010?  Have you set some career resolutions for yourself?

It’s been a few months since I set my personal and professional strategies for 2009.  As any strategic planning goes there have been some strategies that have worked and others that still need work.  I’ve fortunately only left a couple to collect dust on the shelf.

My personal strategies have definitely come more easily.  I’ve been focusing a lot on balancing the amount of work I do, with the time I spend having quality time with family and friends.   It’s been easier than I thought to take a couple nights off a week to not do any work, although the other days do seem to be more stressful.  My hope is that when I find my balance with my work the stress will lessen.

Finding personal balance. Balance is still a quandary to me.  When 2009 started I thought balance was planning my time better.  In actuality, I am already great at managing my time.  The real change needs to be what I do with my time.  I have been planning around my driving forces.  The process seems to be going well, and I have already come up with ideas for how my personal and work time should and could be spent better. Over the next few months, especially after the wedding, I will be exploring these more and setting my new, more directive, career path.

Getting married. As you may have guessed this plan has been the easiest to achieve, although the road getting their is a little rocky.  In less than a month the plan will be complete!

Setting time aside for personal creativity. I can definitely say my original strategy of drawing more is a little dusty.  I am just realizing I’ve actually been using my artistic creativity, but in other ways.  My creativity has been spent creating wedding invitations, working on logos, and voter guides.  After sitting on a panel in which I discussed my career path, I realized I entered the nonprofit sector to meld my creative side with my work.  Remembering this has helped me feel better about not being creative in other ways, although I am still waiting for time to draw more.

Focusing my civic engagement. My goal was to not taking on any projects outside of my work with the League of Women Voters and YNPN.  So far, I have taken on two.  Yes, that may seem like a failure, but both seem to fit more with the career path I would like to take rather than civic engagement.  This does feel like a little bit of an excuse, but working on social media and citizen journalism projects have made me giddy in the past few months.

Making my blog worth writing for. Okay, okay I have realized that all along my blog has been worth writing for, it just doesn’t look great.  Over the past few months I have been writing and rewriting my personal mission and have put together objectives for what I want my blog to focus on.  After the wedding my plan is to put together a whole new blog, with a lot of the same content, some new content, and a whole new look.  In the interim it is possible you will see some visual differences on this blog.

Completing my masters without going crazy. In a previous post, I discussed my need to take a semester off from grad school.  With all the changes in my life and my increased workload the added pressure of class was just too much.  This strategy will only be on the shelf for a little while though.  My plan is to begin classes again in June, although I am still debating on a major change.  More to come on that.

My professional strategies have gone a little differently than my personal ones.  My personal life seems to be heading in the right direction, but my work life has hit a wall.  All this can be contributed to staffing changes at the Center, changes in workload, and my recent desire to serve more than work on infrastructure.  It is really the great debate in my life right now.  I’m hoping by the end of 2009 my work life will be as blissful as the personal side.

Find balance at work. I have already spoken to this a little bit.  Work has been a tornado since January, and I haven’t had the chance to focus my projects.  Work is starting to slow down now, and my hope is that I can focus some of my projects and make some more time to do some stretch projects using more of my best skills.

Integrate what I am learning in my masters program. Because I took the semester off from class, my course work hasn’t been at the top of my mind.  The integration of work and school continues to be inserting my textbook knowledge of the past into my programs.  My experience seems to be more typical than strategic.  This strategy doesn’t seem as relevant as it did 4 months ago.

Don’t be so hard on myself and don’t take it personally. I can definitely say I am coming close to figuring this one out, although it will always be part of me.  There has been the occasional moment of, “I can’t believe I would do something like that”, but overall I seem to be doing well.  Honestly, I think I may just be to busy lately to worry about taking anything personally.

Stay connected with my growing network. I have been taking this strategy pretty seriously.  I have been exploring other possible job opportunities and building YNPN, both of which mean keeping up with your network.  It has been great getting to know more people in the community, and I hope this continues to expand.

Learn something from each of my coworkers. With all the changes at work, and changes in co-workers, I haven’t been able to make a concerted effort towards learning something new from them.  There has been little lessons here and there, and I have also been working on making sure to ask for advice.  All and all, I think it will work out best to continue to look to them from support.  You learn something new every day, right?

Put my thoughts about nonprofit systems on paper. I have been doing a lot of thinking around my blog, and my place in the nonprofit sector.  Most of my writing and diagramming has been around those two things.  My hope is to start writing more about nonprofit systems in the future, once everything has settled.

I will continue to keep my strategies updated after the wedding.  Between now and then there won’t be much blogging. But be looking out for my Top 10 coming soon!