May Goals!

As promised, I’m back with my newly updated May 2020 goal list. 

Since I didn’t exactly knock it out of the park with my April accomplishments, many of my May goals are basically rollovers from April. 

Being the new month and all, I, of course, am feeling rather enlightened and sure that this month however, I will certainly be able to tackle all of the above. 🙂 (Because our future selves are always way more efficient, motivated and capable than our current or past selves. Haha.)

But in all seriousness, I think a majority of this should be do-able, with some planning and effort. On the plus side, I will now have those extra 12 hours off per week, so at least some extra items should be able to get checked off the list. 

I am adding a few that I didn’t discuss yesterday:

* Family: 

–Do a puzzle together

I have pulled over “do a puzzle together” from my Quintile #2 list. I hadn’t put this on my April list, since I figured we would be so busy reading the books I put on that list (lol!) but since this quarantine time could (maybe?) be starting to wind down a little bit, I want to do a puzzle with the boys. It’s relaxing and nice to just sit and do together.

*Work:

– Use timer method for at least 5 hours of my work day for focused work and create daily schedule so kids are aware

I haven’t discussed my timer system too much yet, but I like to do focused chunks of work in 30-60 minute blocks where I set a timer, turn on my Forest app and just work with no distractions. (I talked about this about in a previous post here). 

I know with the kids home I can’t realistically work 8 hours straight with no interruptions, but I can generally get at least 5 hours worth of focused blocks done (spread out throughout the day). It does require some advance planning and letting the kids know that I am completely unavailable during these times, or I sometimes do these blocks earlier in the morning or in the evenings. Then, for the rest of my work day I try to do less focused things that I don’t mind if they pop in or interrupt me a bit during. I have been doing this, but I haven’t done the best job of really laying out my schedule for the kids every day. I want to tweak my system a little bit so they KNOW in advance when I’m doing these blocks so they can plan their questions and stuff around it better. It’s been a bit too wishy-washy and I find they aren’t really respecting my work blocks as much as they should be. 

*Home:

–I added back on the storage room blocks and garden planning (but increased to 4 30 minute blocks each!) That’s only 2 hours of time per task in the whole month, so this should be more than doable. 

-I didn’t add any other new Home goals since there are plenty from April’s rollover

*Self: 

–Meditate for at least 5 minutes every day! 

This is one of my big changes for the month. I might do a longer post on this topic tomorrow since I have been wanting to share my struggles with meditation. It’s something I’ve been wanting to incorporate into my daily routine for years and yet I always fail to do it. I’ve had some breakthroughs and have had some long, successful streaks, but then I eventually always stop short of it ever becoming a real, long term habit. I decided to re-commit to this for the entire month of May. “Meditation May” I’m calling it!! 

-Walk at least 10,000 steps every day!

Another big addition for May. Since we have been home so much, my activity level has been pathetic. Sure, I work out every morning and I take 1-2 short walks, but that is NOT ENOUGH! Normally I would be out and about, at stores or running errands, etc., but none of that is happening right now. Some days, despite my workout/ walks I still am seriously at like 4,000-5,000 steps. I don’t know if I surpassed 10,000 steps a single day in April! This is ridiculous. 

I need to fit some more intentional movement in my day- too many days (after my workout and short walk), I go from sitting at my desk to sitting at the table helping the boys with school to standing at the stove to sitting at the dinner table to sitting my butt on the couch. Day over. 

To get over 10,000 steps I know I need to add in some more activity- some things I have done in the past are jump on the treadmill in between my focused work blocks for 3-5 minutes to get some steps in, do 100 jumping jacks every time I take a bathroom break, or see about extending my morning walk with Ivan by a little bit (or adding a second evening walk in with him! I’m liking that idea). 

Regardless, I am GOING to walk over 10,000 steps everyday. Just because I sort of feel like a bump on a log otherwise and I actually am just tired of sitting so much! I am going to record my steps on my post so I have a little accountability! 

–No BLTs! 

I wrote about this on another post, but I have been having some issues with Bites, Licks and Tastes occurring too much around here. Meaning I have been doing too much snacking, grabbing little bits of other people’s food, etc. So I am going to focus on not eating between planned meals and snack times! When I’m aware of it, I can catch myself and notice just how many times I try to do this in the day. Oops.

–The other “Self” goals are rollovers from April- read 10 min. per day, keep up with The Work (Beachbody) program, get outside everyday, and do my Duo Lingo app at least 5x per week!  


I have a habit tracker in my notebook where I will track all of these but I want to pay special attention to the Meditation, Steps and Reading. I’m going to make little boxes on my daily section of my day planner so that these are a little more “in my face”, if you will, to make sure I do them! 


In other news, we have some warm weather headed our way this weekend!!! 

It looks pretty short lived (back down into the 50’s next week….) but we will embrace the 70+ temps today!! 

I’ll leave you with a pic of how I started off my weekend last night: 

Steps= 10,958
Meditation= done!

Daily Gratitude:
I am grateful that our road is getting resurfaced! It is kind of a major hassle at the moment, since our whole neighborhood is practically ripped up. But, I am grateful that when it’s done it will be pretty and smooth. It was old and we had a bunch of potholes in the entrance to our cul-de-sac. I’m grateful to the workers for their efforts on the project- they’ve been working long hours out there with big machines and lots of manual labor. I’m grateful that we live somewhere where our roads are taken care of! (However, some of the other streets around us are getting sidewalks put in since we don’t have them in our area…They have had to cut down TONS of huge beautiful trees that are in the way of where the sidewalks will go!!! This makes me SO SAD!! Thankfully, since we live in a cul-de-sac, we aren’t getting the sidewalks, but it makes me sad to see 40+ year old healthy trees going down.)