There’s one last type of goal I’m working on for this sprint and it involves a 3 month project that doesn’t necessarily have a daily component or monthly benchmarks.
These are the in between projects, which I could do in a weekend and might take an hour or two over months.
Project 1 is to finish my half bath – this has been in progress this year and I want to see it done. In order to decide what “done” looks like I made a simple checklist:
- finish wall paint
- paint door
- buy beadboard, cut to fit, paint and install
- buy faucet
- build countertop for sink
- hire plumber to install sink
- patch open drywall
- install 2 shelves on walls
And that’s it! I know, it’s a lot of work to do and I don’t yet have the faucet or beadboard to get done. I may also need to buy some wood for the countertop.
Project 2 is to lay the new kitchen floor tiles, another home improvement project. To do so I’ll need to remove the old tiles, which may involve moving the stove and fridge out. I need to paint the side of the cabinet that butts up against the fridge and then lay the tiles in the room. When it’s done I will move the fridge back in and re-level it.
Not all of these projects are home based, project 3 is to read 18 books over 3 months. I am always buying new and interesting books and am trying to stay ahead by reading 50-60 every year. This might mean powering though some shorter novels or finishing the audio books in my queue but I want to have 6 books done per month so that’s 18 in 3 months.
A final goal I’ll share is project 4 meal plan 3x a week for the whole summer. To do this I started in my notes app with a line for each week of the next 3 months, Sunday to Saturday. I’m sorry for y’all who like Monday to Sunday calendars but no.
For each week I made a list underneath of 3 entrees I wanted to try to make, then added sides or desserts as I wanted. A sample week for 4th of July (this week’s menu) looks like this:
- Butter chicken + rice + naan
- Hamburgers + pasta salad
- Hot dogs
- Deviled eggs
- Apple pie
Since I already had hamburgers, hot dogs and buns, the only items I needed to buy were for pasta salad and the butter chicken. As you can tell, if I had a recipe in mind I linked it to the list so it’s easy peasy to find and get the ingredients.
Here my action steps are a little more flexible because I will need to make a list of ingredients every week and shop for everything I need. And… this is critical… if I don’t schedule time in my week to cook, it won’t happen. I like to batch cook so I don’t need to heat up the oven many times when it’s super hot outside.
For these types of goals it can be harder to gauge success without benchmarks or check-ins. It’s a very real possibility that the goal goes down on paper and then in 90 days… what goal? Oh I forgot!
While I haven’t shared every goal here yet, some are work related or personal, I do have them on a single sheet and hanging in my house where I can see them daily.
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