Things I’m Doing To Get Back On Track This Summer

Confession time! I pride myself on being real with others so I’m about to be real with you. The past few weeks I’ve been slacking. I know, I KNOW! We all have times in life when we slack. It’s hard to be on 24/7 and excel in all areas of your life. This is how burnout happens, which leads you to be less productive in the first place. If anybody knows about being burnout, it’s me.

Granted, I’ve been sort of casually floating but I’ve been using travel, work and my health as an excuse. For the past two months, to be honest. And after working on my vision board and coming up with some goals, this isn’t gonna work. As a matter of fact, I’m already declaring my birthday goal to be, if it doesn’t line up with where I’d like to see myself, I’m not doing it. Not everybody or everything deserves your time or energy. And it’s up to you (me in this case) to be protective and take it back. So, this is how I’m doing it.

Give Myself Extra Time

Gah! I am the absolute worse at estimating how much time something will take to be completed. I love assigning different hours of my day to different tasks but to be honest, I really underestimate how much is needed. And it’s not a case of done is better than perfect either. It’s legit just me underestimating things. Something that will really take a few hours is only assigned one hour by my standards. This is a set up for epic failure on my part.

Going forward, I’m going to try to give myself additional time to complete tasks. This will be everything from work projects to cleaning at home. I already live by my planner so just making sure I keep it updated with things that are due and plans I’ve already made will help. Staying organized is important when practicing good time management!

Put In The Time

I know what you’re probably thinking after reading the above. Athena, you just said that you were going to give yourself extra time to complete tasks and projects. Yeah, I said what I said. And I will continue to stand by it. But to be perfectly honest, I don’t put in as much time as I should on certain projects, primarily my website. One of the reasons I’m so behind in my goals financially is because I thought I’d be earning a lot more money by now. The two clients I work with and love don’t take up that much time yet after I finish the projects, I give myself permission to check out and run around with friends. And that’s nothing on my friends, that’s entirely on me. I love being out of my house and having a very blessed social life. But it’s reflecting on my time I allocate my business and major money making the opportunity.

In order to grow my income, I will be shifting the amount of time to grow my website substantially. It will be done in small increments to avoid being overwhelmed so I can stay focused and I will be working on completing projects I’ve been sitting on for months. My goal with this website was to be as honest as possible while helping my readers live their best lives, through personal finance and life knowledge. I’m not doing that if I can’t walk the walk myself. It’s time to check myself before I wreck myself.

Get Back To Cash Envelopes

For the past month, I’ve been playing with the idea of getting back to cash envelope method. For those of you who don’t know what the cash envelope method is, it’s pretty simple to explain and put into action. At the beginning of each pay period based upon your budget and financial goals, you allocate a certain amount of money towards variable spending categories, such as groceries or entertainment.

You then withdraw cash from your bank, write different spending categories on envelopes and place the cash into the corresponding envelope. The key to a cash envelope to being successful is you only fill it with the predetermined allocated amount. Once that amount is gone out of the envelope, it’s gone.

Cash envelopes are an amazing way to grow self-discipline, keep yourself on track and see where your money is really going. But they only work if you utilize the system and don’t cheat. Withdrawing additional money from an ATM or using your card for spending would be an example of cheating. For full information, you can check out the system from the man who created it, Dave Ramsey.

I’ve used cash envelopes three times this past month and have had success. In two of the instances, I spent everything in the cash envelope but nothing else. The last time, I came under budget! I’m going to continue to assign cash in an envelope for trips and my weekly spending of food, gas, and fun. This has been helpful and as long as I don’t go out to eat very often, I can stay on track. Eating out is a luxury that leaves me feeling crappy so it’s something I need to limit anyways.

 

Work On Personal Development

My go to coping mechanism when I get stressed is to check out,mentally. I will literally sit on my cell phone and scroll endlessly on social media sites, especially Facebook. Wasting time on social media isn’t something that will help me reach my goals faster so I need to stop. I’ll be allowing myself a few minutes in the morning and evening and after that, no more. I can deal with my stress in other, more productive ways.

One of the more productive areas I hope to start spending time in is my faith. A friend invited me to church a few weeks ago and it was just what my soul needed. When I attend church and pray regularly, I feel a lot better about life, mainly being anxious about things I have no real control over. Church and prayer also reminds me of personality traits and actions I’d like to practice such as compassion.

Along with church, I’m hoping to keep active and read more. My hospital stay last month reminded me how much I love reading every night before bed so I’ve been picking that up. I’m hoping to finish the current book I’m reading and at least eight more to help with my goal of reading 36 books this year.

I’ve also been more active consistently due to FitBit challenges between myself and friends. Every week, we compete to see who spends the most time on our feet while teasing and cheering each other along. It’s been not only fun but helpful! Some days, I don’t feel like working out due to the heat Phoenix is known for. But if I can still see that I’m active, and spending time running around during the day, I don’t feel as bad. It’s also a great reminder for me to move at work given that I have a desk job.

Keep The End In Mind

Having so many goals for myself and areas to focus in, it’s hard to stay motivated. If having a few mental illnesses that are prone to slowing some down aren’t enough,  it’s still easy to procrastinate. It’s human nature to want to sit around and take the easy way out. If it wasn’t, a lot more people would be highly effective and successful. The laziness of summer just adds to it. By keeping the end in mind, I’m hoping to stay motivated to turn it back around.

I created a vision board earlier this month to help me stay focused on my end goals. It was through completing this exercise that I was able to see the life I want and what that really looks like, to me. My vision board wasn’t entirely anything I can’t work towards and a lot of it has to do with previous steps I’ve taken in my life as well as where I’m at now. I’m really happy and proud of how far I’ve come, especially in the past five years. I’m grateful for my cute apartment, my career and everything else God has blessed me with. Now, it’s time to keep my vision in mind as I set off to the next step in my journey. By keeping the end in mind, I’m hoping to do just that.

Summer has a way of sneaking by but I’m a firm believer that change can happen any season. What about you?