What’s Up For New Years?

I’m just wondering today if every other parent in the world is as lame as I am, or do any of you have cool plans for New Years?

Creative ways to party as a parent?

Tips for scoring the ‘good’ babysitter?

Let’s share, shall we? (Come on, I know you’re not actually working today…)

2009: The Year of the Vision

Do you make New Year’s Resolutions? I don’t really, but the start of a new year is a very good time to work on new habits. I participated in a workshop yesterday where we talked a lot about planning – long range planning. A lot of us realized that we haven’t taken the time to dream up a ten or twenty year plan. We haven’t thought much about our livelong goals.

Do You Have a Vision For Your Life?

Think about how fast ten years goes by. And it goes by whether you’re doing what you want or just plodding along. So that’s my big New Year’s habit – to spend more time creating and reviewing long term goals and dreams.

In another part of the workshop we identified some of our strengths and weaknesses. One of my strengths is organization and planning. I’m SO good at setting goals, making lists, and getting things done. Speaking of GTD, part of an good organization philosophy is to make sure you’re getting the right things done. That is, working toward the big goals you’ve actually chosen for your life. We also talked a lot about organizational values yesterday and the need to clearly articulate what they mean to you.

What Do You Really Value?

For example, you may value say you value honesty, but how does that play out in your life? You may also value relationships. Sometimes those two values are going to collide. As when a friend does something you don’t necessarily agree with, but is nevertheless not really any of your business. Are you honest about it? Depends. Turns out you need to rank your values for just such occasions. If you rank honest above relationships, you bust out with the raw truth. However, if you rank relationships over honesty you keep your mouth shut.

The focus of the day was on professional situations, but the workshop facilitators encouraged us all to think about our overall personal values too. I kept looking at the wall where the center we were in had their mission and vision statements, right there next to their list of values.

So as part of my New Year’s habit to take more time for BIG planning, I’ve decided to create a personal mission and vision statement, and get to work on those values too.

Tools You Can Use

• David Allen’s brilliant book, Getting Things Done
• My new fave, Zen Habits
• I use gtdagenda.com to manage my tasks and as I work on the bigger picture components using that system I’ll report my results back to you. I use the premium version of this site, but there’s a free version that is essentially the same. You just can’t track as many goals and projects.
• Check out Parent Bloggers this weekend. Together with the Big Tent group organization site, they want to know how you’ll get your act together in 2009.
• PBN and Big Tent have teamed with and Compass Life and Business Designs to offer group leaders who start a group on or move to BigTent by December 31 a free one month membership ($19 value) to Compass Coaching Network. Plus group leaders will be entered in a grand prize drawing for a “Life Makeover” private coaching series ($1500 value). Groups must be of at least ten members.

Go, dream, get organized!

Picture Yourself Here

This is going to be me tomorrow. I am getting my post-holiday holiday. My mini-spa retreat. I’m going to this new place that has you sit in the sauna (supposedly some special infrared light – whatever) before your massage. How cool is that? You get all warm and relaxed before getting all warm and relaxed. I sprung for the 90 minutes because I’m worth it. And because this is my birthday present I saved up for myself. After the holidays, we all deserve a little pampering.

Because…

Gone is the Christmas tree. Gone are all the houseguests. Gone is my little 2 year old niece and her diapers. Gone is my little 93 year old grandmother and her diapers. Gone is my mother. Gone are the in-laws. Gone are the children back to school. Gone are the endless lists of tasks to accomplish and the accopanying guilt that we are not really enjoying the season. Gone, gone, gone – another year of breathing over. And another one begins. This one’s going to be full of changes and excitement, like all the rest.

What are you going to do for yourself?