I made a whole “21 for 2021” list back at the start of the year. But even then, I had the feeling that 21 goals was too many. Within a couple weeks, I noticed that small things on the list (goals not even that important to me) were taking mental energy away from the more important things. My attention was too divided and I couldn't focus. So I revamped my list the other day and pared it down to 7 goals. I feel much happier now about doing only 1/3 as many things because these are all things I really want to do. By doing less, I can do more.

What happened to the other goals? Some of them I scrapped altogether, and the rest I moved to my Power Hour list. Gretchen Rubin says that things that can be done anytime get done at no time. So she came up with the idea of a Power Hour list. You put things on the list that aren’t necessarily urgent but are things you want or need to do eventually. Then you set aside an hour here and there to work on things on the list. You can be as exact or as inexact about this as you want. You can work on your Power Hour list every Saturday morning for an hour. Or you can just keep the list in view and review it occasionally and when you find yourself with a boring rainy afternoon, you remember your list and let it guide you to get something done that you might otherwise have forgotten you wanted or needed to do. I feel better knowing I have those other goals that didn’t make my 7 list still written down somewhere so I can revisit them from time to time. But now they aren't taking away from these 7 main goals.

I won’t discuss all 7 of my goals in this post but I want to note a few things:

I LOVE the Bible Recap so much. My friend Natalie introduced me to it because she loves it, and I told her I would try it for January. I am all in now. Every day I read the assigned chapters (we are reading through the Bible chronologically) and then I listen to Tara-Leigh Cobble’s short podcast overview of the day’s reading. I love everything about engaging with the Bible in this way. Thank you to Natalie for inviting me to do this.

I bought a 1000 grit whet stone for sharpening my knives and my dad helped me recently when he and my mom came to visit. He spent a considerable amount of time researching and watching YouTube videos on how to sharpen knives on a whet stone and then he spent 3 hours one afternoon sharpening 3 of my knives and one of his. With my newly sharpened knives, I once again feel like a magician in the kitchen. I still want to learn to use the whet stone for myself, but I wasn’t going to turn down having my dad do it for me. He did a great job and I am thankful.

I am not completely sure how I’m going to take steps to become more engaged in politics but the first action step I took was to watch this Village Voices video that our church put together with a small panel of smart people. TJ did the filming for it, so when I told him recently that I wanted to learn more about politics, he suggested I start with this. As I sat outside in the sun the other day and watched the video on my phone, I took 6 pages of notes in my little blue notebook. It was such a good starting place for me, and I loved learning the things I learned.

I am so happy to finally be memorizing Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73. I have wanted to learn this for a long time. The other day I was reading an Alexander McCall Smith novel in the “44 Scotland Street” series, and Domenica and Angus began discussing this exact sonnet. I became even more motivated than before to memorize this piece. It’s that Buddhist saying again: “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” So first, I copied Domenica and Angus’s conversation from the AMS book in my commonplace book. And second, I taped the sonnet to my kitchen window so I can do memory work while I do dinner prep. Double happy place.

To manage smaller goals and tasks, I also will continue to make a little monthly To-doodle-do list like the one below. These are things I would do anyway, but putting them on a list helps me close windows in my brain and gives me the satisfaction of marking little accomplishments off as the month progresses. You might notice that a couple of the things on the February list are action steps to accomplishing my 7 goals so it serves a checks and balances purpose too.