Last week I wrote about my new whiteboard organizational system and how it’s helped me divide my goals, projects, and daily life habits into different categories so I can keep track of what I’m working on. In addition, by giving each category a rating from 1 to 10, I can easily see how well I’m doing in each category, and what needs improving.
The categories I made are going to look different than the categories you might be thinking about for your own goals and projects. Several of mine are Japan-specific, and a few are specific to my goals as a writer. I’m listing them here so you can get an idea of what I’m trying to improve in my own life, but also so you might get some ideas for how to sort your own future goals. In no particular order:
Daily Life
This is a big one—I realized that when I don’t have clean clothes, groceries, or a tidy apartment, or when my bicycle breaks or my internet stops working, these are problems I have to deal with right away so they don’t become major distractions. Habits like only using social media once per day also belong here. If I don’t have any major worries or distractions, this category earns a high score.
Health/Sleep/Diet
This is another big one—if I get sick, or don’t get enough sleep, or am just plain feeling crummy or hung over, this also affects my ability to get work done. In this category I not only placed goals like eating well, avoiding excessive drinking, and avoiding screens before bed, but also goals that will improve my mental well-being, like writing in my journal.
Exercise
I kept this one separate from the Health category because it was getting too long, and while doing a ton of working out or exercise isn’t a major goal of mine, staying in basic shape is. For me, small things like going to my local tennis club once a week and taking regular bike rides go a long way here.
Style/Grooming
This is the category where I put things like haircuts and buying new underwear when my old ones start to get full of holes. It’s also the category for buying new clothes, making sure I look neat and well-groomed, and improving the way I present myself to the world, because this shit matters too.
Cultural Stimulation
I love books, but I also love movies, music, board games, and video games that connect me to bigger ideas and help keep me in tune with the creative process. Though it’s impossible to keep up with everything, I try to stay reasonable here: read one new book a week, watch one new movie a week, etc., along with specific places or ideas I want to check out.
Experience Japan
I live in a foreign country with lots of cool stuff to explore, and I also want to be seeing and experiencing new things here, both in Toyama and beyond. Travel plans, places to visit, foods to eat, activities to try, and Japan-related books to read all go here.
Writing
I usually use the term Creative Work on this blog to describe a nebulous mix of actual writing, making cool things, marketing my work, and getting my name out there, but wanted some way of differentiating the actual act of writing as separate from all these other things. Novel progress, along with smaller writing projects I’m working on go here.
Active Online Presence
In this category I include stuff like posting on this blog, sharing cool Instagram photos, and tweeting—any way I can show people I’m connected to that I’m still out there doing cool stuff and not going away anytime soon.
Expand Audience
Expanding my audience involves anything designed to increase my reach with people who don’t know me: publishing writing in a new place, giving a book reading like I did last month, getting someone to share a post, and even getting an agent (!!!!!) and eventually a novel publishing deal. (This category tends to get pretty long…)
Professional Cred
Building my resume and establishing myself is important, but I realized during my quest to get a TEFL certificate that it exists separately from my writing goals and can sometimes involve taking a completely different direction. That’s why this has to have its own category.
Japanese Study
Getting better at Japanese is important to me, both because it helps me in my daily life and work, helps with getting to know people, and because it’s a BIG step toward better understanding the culture. This is a place to list textbooks I’m working on, ways of practicing, and other language-related goals.
Day Job
Anything to do with my Day Job goes here, though I try to keep it slim to avoid clogging the board.
Finances
Anything money or budget-related goes here. Since I have a steady income stream at the moment and am finally, at long last free of student loan debt (!), I also want to keep this category slim so I can focus on more pressing matters.
Moral Character
In the process of mapping out my goals I realized that doing the right thing and making the world a better place in even a small way is important to me. Though a lot of my writing and creative goals include that component beneath the surface, I wanted a separate category for things like supporting artists and local venues, not buying shit on Amazon, and helping out friends and family who need it.
Social Life
Being lonely sucks pretty hard, so I try to maintain a good social balance in my Japan life while also keeping in touch with friends and family who are far away. If I’m trying to make travel plans with a friend or have someone coming to visit, this is also a good place to chart the planning process.
Dating
Yeah, sometimes I do that too…
Pure Fun
While I wanted the Cultural Stimulation category to include things that keep my mind alert and flowing with new ideas, sometimes I also need to space out, get away, or do something mindless that isn’t about accomplishing a goal or moving forward in some way. I made this category for things like hanging out with friends, playing video games, and doing things that, while they might not have any other real value, just make me feel good, and that shit matters too.
Life Gets Confusing, and Knowing Your Values Helps
I’m loving my whiteboard system because it’s helping me understand how complex life is, and how working too much in one area keeps you from working on another. Because the number I give each category represents how well I feel it’s going on any given week, it’s possible that I might spend no time at all developing my Professional Cred and still feel it deserves a 9, while I could easily spend thirty hours a week on Writing and it still wouldn’t feel like enough.
The whiteboard category system has helped show me all the different ways I have to focus my time, but also how much time I should be devoting to those areas. This is about a billion times clearer than blindly working toward things that come up day-by-day, and helps clarify the planning process so that long-term goals don’t get lost.
Oh yeah, before you go…
But I Also Have a Day Job on Facebook
My Instagram where I post cool pics from Japan