accountability

March Goals Update

~ kofriedery ~ Leave a comment

“Spring is the time of plans and projects.” – Leo Tolstoy

Alright friends! This is a long one today. Since I’ve talked so much about goal setting and accountability in the past, I’m going to keep the train rolling with a monthly update. I also want to say that I had some pretty bad winter blues from January into February and I think having tangible goals helped me from completely falling into the funk. That being said, the sun is out a little more these days and things are looking up for me, so I’m being a bit more ambitious about what I hope to accomplish in March. Hopefully you are feeling some positive effects of the longer days and nicer weather. Take that optimism and run with it!

Be Present – My goal in February was to journal daily and nail down my time-blocking strategy. While I didn’t hit every single day with the journal, it’s definitely becoming a regular habit most days and I can tell it’s helping me be present in my daily life. As for the time-blocking schedule, I made progress in figuring out what works for me but it’s not totally perfect yet. What I have figured out is that my most productive hours for writing are from 10am to noon. And then a midday break for movement, shower and lunch. Then the afternoons have been a bit more grab bag in terms of what gets done. Some days it’s errands, some days it’s cleaning, other days it’s reading or research. I think I’m still trying to find that balance between schedule and flexibility that works for me to get stuff done but also promote more spontaneity in my life. I’m adding meditation into my morning routine for March. I have found that doing a quick 5-10 minute meditation in bed when I first wake up actually helps me to get moving faster than if I try to get out of bed immediately. I’m likely to hit snooze a few times, but if I build in that expected 5 minute quiet buffer, I won’t take 20 minutes of unproductive-snooze-button-extra-sleep.

Focus on the Essential – I stuck to my agreement of only purchasing skincare or hair care to replace empties. I bought one bottle of a clarifying shampoo that was completely new to my routine, but much needed. I had one big clothing purchase, but I’m still trying to decide whether to keep it or not. Other than that I was pretty good with not purchasing anything unnecessary for myself. I did spend more on houseware purchases this month, but it’s because we did some pretty significant rearranging of furniture to better match our space. So I bought a smaller dresser for our bedroom and more bins for storage under our bed and in closets. I feel like my “focus on the essential” really helped because I did more research before buying anything, along with lots of measuring and determining what we really “needed” vs what I wanted to buy from the Container Store (which was everything). So…success! Excited to continue this trend for the rest of the year!

Stay Connected – I connected with people much more this month! I had a couple video calls and FaceTimes, texted with a few friends I haven’t been in touch with recently, and even met up with a friend (safely) in person! As I said above, I am emerging from my cocoon of winter blues and I think there was definitely an impact on my mood when I made an effort to talk to and see people. Continuing this effort into March and hoping nicer weather can facilitate more in person walks or coffee dates!

Activate Inner SJW – Making an effort to read about Black history every day in February was such a good idea. I wrote about it last week, but I was inspired, shocked, and in awe of what I learned. This month my goal is to find an organization that I can start volunteering with to create more action. I have a couple in mind to look into and will make a decision by the end of the month.

As for the other goals I had for the month, I think I did pretty well. Starting this week I’ll be using a monthly goals and habits tracker to keep closer tabs on how I’m doing day-to-day.

  • 30 minutes of movement every day – I can’t say I hit 30 minutes every day, but I did make more of an effort to do indoor workouts on the really cold and snowy days in February rather than just taking the day off. Keeping this goal for March.
  • Add 5,000 words to my novel manuscript. I exceeded this by 3,000 words! I think this was a result of my time blocking and focusing on novel writing 1,000 words just two days a week. But with four weeks in February, that totaled an added 8,000 words! So I’m going to continue the 2,000 words per week for March and attempt to add another 8,000 words.
  • Read 5 books. I only finished 4 books this month. I know my book report had 5 listed, but one was included because I forgot to write about it in January. I also picked some really long books to read in February so that definitely affected my book number. Aiming for 5 books in March!
  • Eat healthier. Yes, this goes against all my goal advice by not being specific or time bound. I do have a more specific goal and process for tracking, but I won’t share it here because it isn’t relevant to anyone else’s situation and body. In addition to trying to eat healthier, I also have a goal of drinking 60 oz of water every day. I usually end up drinking 48-50 oz, so I’m just upping by a glass or two per day.
  • 15 minutes of cleaning every day. I have a tendency to procrastinate housework until it becomes too bad to ignore. And it creates a really bad mental cycle for me of stress and criticism for letting it get so bad. Recently I’ve been adding 15 minutes of cleaning to my to do list every day and I think it’s been helping me stay on top of things and feel better about my space. I mean, I’ve been stuck in my house for a year…it’s about time I made an effort to keep it clean and tidy!

“The evil that is in the world comes out of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding.”― Albert Camus

~ kofriedery ~ Leave a comment

“Assume good intent.” I’m sure most of you have heard that phrase before and some of you may have even adopted it as a rule in your life. I’m not going to tell you it’s a wrong way to live, but I do want to offer up a bit of critical analysis on how it might end up doing more harm than good in certain situations.

During my years in Corporate America, one constant that I’ve found is that wherever you have groups of diverse individuals, there will be conflict. Most workplaces strive to reduce interpersonal conflict, through codes of conduct, informal agreements, or even group workshops. One of the teams I worked on made an attempt to address their history of conflict by creating a set of team commitments – “assume positive intent” was included on the list. While this was written out explicitly, it had always been an implicit expectation at most companies I worked for.

I could never really put into words why it didn’t sit well with me. Because on the surface level, it seems like the right attitude to have. Approach interactions assuming everyone is on the same team and wants what it best for the group. But the way it was stated always made me feel like it was putting the responsibility on the receiving party to “just get over it” or “let it roll off your back.” Again, generally good skills to have in the workplace. But ultimately I felt like it was still missing the root cause of why people sometimes walked away with hurt feelings in certain situations.

And then I started hearing people use the phrase “impact over intent” and I realized that’s what I’ve always felt was missing in these corporate mantras of “assume good intent.” There are times when we need to hold people accountable for their impact rather than making the recipient accountable for their reaction. The commonly used analogy is Mary stepping on Alex’s foot and apologizing even though she didn’t mean to. She is recognizing that her unintentional actions caused harm.

This is certainly not a new concept. In fact, as I was thinking about writing this post I googled “harmful good intentions” and a ton of content came up. I was particularly struck by this blog post* that discusses the harm that these kinds of workplace agreements can have on diversity and inclusion efforts. The author does a great job of expanding on the “stepping on the foot” analogy, stating that groups with a history of discrimination have been stepped on day after day and policies to assume good intent put them in a position where they have to ignore the repeated harm because people didn’t mean to step on them. And that if they call out the harmful actions of people around them, they are subject to a code of conduct that requires them to assume their peers meant no harm. It gives them little to no recourse for correcting bad behavior.

I think back to how often workplace relationships could have been mended or even avoided breaking in the first place if acknowledging the impact of words and actions was placed above defending intentions. Would everyone be best friends? No, of course not. But I think a lot of hurt would have been lessened.

All this isn’t to say that we shouldn’t still assume good intent as a starting place. The continuation of the title quote from Camus is “On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn’t the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill.” I really do think for the most part people are not acting or speaking with malice, more often than not it’s carelessness or a misunderstanding of how they affect others . But I think there’s a lot more emphasis that could be placed on impact over intent. I always say that words mean something. And if we start to explicitly change how we talk about interactions I think it would start to change how those interactions happen as well.

*disclaimer: I cannot vouch for anything else on that website, I only read the one blog post and liked it. Upon initial glance it looks like there’s some interesting content to dig into.

“She stood in the storm and when the wind did not blow her way, she adjusted her sails.” – Elizabeth Edwards

~ kofriedery ~ 3 Comments

The definition of resilience, as defined by Merriam-Webster, is 1: the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused especially by compressive stress; 2: an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.

Now, the primary definition is how resilience is used within the context of physics. And the secondary definition is what we commonly mean when we label a person as resilient. But I think the two together can be applied to how we have coped with the past year! I mean, I feel particularly deformed by stress and am hoping I have the capability to recover my size and shape!

Resilience is often used as a determining factor in predicting someone’s success in life. After all, life is nothing if not constant change and if we are able to bounce back quickly, we should be able to continue on our merry way without much difficulty. However, I think people often omit one small word from their personal definition of resilience. “Adjust”

We usually expect someone who is resilient to end up back on the same path as before, regardless of the hardships thrown their way. Resiliency is often paired with perseverance in those circumstances. But what if there is a whole group of people who have managed to adjust their path and instead of recognizing their resiliency in doing so, we label them as quitters?

I was listening to a podcast recently about when it is a good idea to quit. I will try not to be too biased here because I’m actually a really big proponent of quitting…in the right circumstances. I’ll get to that in a minute. Back to the podcast, they were discussing the fallacy of sunk costs. So often we feel the need to stick with something simply because we’ve already invested so much time, energy, money, etc… But continuing down that path and investing more time, energy or money isn’t going to get us a bigger return on investment. Sometimes we do more harm by sticking with it than by quitting.

It isn’t an easy decision of when to quit something, but I think asking yourself if you are suffering by continuing, if it is still serving a long term goal you believe in, and also exploring if there are alternatives you haven’t thought of yet. The example they used in the podcast was a young woman who was playing viola but wasn’t enjoying it. Her mom was actually encouraging her to quit, but she kept sticking with it. Eventually it came out that she was continuing to play in her school orchestra, community youth orchestra, and taking private lessons on top of that because she thought it would help her get into a good college. She realized that there were so many alternative things she could do with her time, that she might actually enjoy, that would help her college applications. So she quit and never looked back.

I also really like a quote from Glennon Doyle who talks about quitting every day. “A journalist once asked me, “With the onslaught of bad news and endless needs – how do you not quit?” I said: “Oh, I do quit! Quitting is my favorite. Every day I quit. Every single day.” I wake up and I care the most amount. And then- at some point – I put it all away and melt into my people and my couch and food and nothingness. And I care not at all. I forget it all. Then I go to sleep and wake up and begin again. Begin and quit every day! Only way to survive. Embrace quitting as a spiritual practice.” She gives it all she can every day and then quits when she needs to. And is able to start it all over again the next day after she has proper rest.

All that to say, I think we need to revise how we think about resiliency. It isn’t about continuing down the same path no matter what obstacles arise. It is about learning how to recover or adapt when these things occur. Recovery could look like Glennon’s – quitting and restarting over and over. Adapting could look like quitting something that isn’t serving your goals and finding alternative pathways.

I think this has been a great year to practice resiliency, just remember that it could look different from what you’ve previously been taught. And don’t be afraid to quit.

“Accountability breeds responsibility” – Stephen R. Covey

~ kofriedery ~ Leave a comment

I’m writing this on the first day of February and I spent my journaling time this morning reflecting on January and how I did with the goals I set for myself. I do think accountability is a big part of working toward your goals, whether it’s a public announcement on a blog or just letting one close friend know what you are working towards. And since I let you all know what my January goals were I’m going to give an update here.

Be Present – my goal for January was to journal every day. I think I missed 2 or 3 days during the month, but overall I was pretty consistent for the month. I used some journal prompts to do some deeper reflection on 2020 and some dreaming about 2021. I plan to continue the daily practice of journaling for February. I am also going to be more intentional about time-blocking my days and weeks so I can be more present and focused in my tasks.

Focus on the Essential – I am very proud of myself for doing no unnecessary spending this month on material things! We did splurge on takeout a couple times, but I stuck to my goal of no new skincare products, hair care products, clothing or home decor items! It actually wasn’t too difficult until I realized that my birthday month always comes with a few “free gift with purchase” rewards at some of my favorite stores. But I then I reminded myself that even though it’s free…it isn’t something I need and therefore it was okay to let it go! I’ll continue this into February, only purchasing replacements for empties and instead making sure to use what I already have. I know I have a couple necessary clothing purchases to make, but I’m going to do my research and be really intentional about what I buy, focusing on quality that will last a long time and also looking into the sustainability practices of the companies I buy from.

Stay Connected – Well I wasn’t successful in this goal completely. I wanted to have two video calls with friends and my second one ended up getting rescheduled to later this week. I did however get to FaceTime with my family a couple times and drove up to the mountains to spend my birthday with my parents instead of being alone, even though it would have been easier to just stay home. Overall I think I made a good effort of staying connected to people instead of isolating myself! For February I want to continue doing one or two video calls, but also making an effort to reach out to a friend via text at the beginning of each week.

Activate Inner SJW – In January I made an effort to engage more on social media and share items that resonated with me. While I did share more than I had before, it didn’t feel like enough. I also signed up for Anti-Racism Daily, which is a daily email newsletter focusing on a different topic every day. I’ve really appreciated the information shared there and have also signed up for their 28 Days of Black History virtual exhibition emails for this month that will share a different work celebrating Black history in the U.S. I also plan to engage with Rachel Cargle’s daily #DiscoverOurGlory learning series where she will be providing daily prompts for people to research and learn about.

I had a couple other goals for the month that I also want to report on:

  • Walk 1 mile every day: I got outside and walked every day! A handful of days I didn’t do a full mile, but still proud of my discipline here. A couple of those short days were due to weather or local roadwork in my neighborhood, so anticipating a cold and snowy February my updated goal will be at least 30 minutes of activity every day, either inside or outside.
  • Write 500 words every week day: I did really well on this one until last week. As I said above – my plan for February is to adjust my time-blocking strategy to hopefully promote more focus and productivity. So…writing for long periods of time on a few days rather than short sessions every day. Overall I’d like to add 5,000 words to my novel manuscript by the end of the month, as well as explore some other ideas for my writing.
  • Read 5 books every month: done and done for January. And I have my February list already picked out! I read 25 books in 2020 and I think I’ll easily hit 60+ this year.