To finish up the year, I thought I’d focus today’s post on looking ahead and considering how to make the most of the blank slate that comes with January 1st. In my last post, I created a guiding list of questions for any teacher that wants to reflect on the past semester before the next one begins. Today, I go over my top four tips for leading a healthy and balanced life in the new year. I’ve also created a new digital planner for the new year.
Tag: goals
Last year, I completed the Ultimate PopSugar Reading Challenge 2017 with one day to spare. I actually read about ten books during the first half of my winter break in order to reach that goal. I’m hoping not to cut it so close this year. For 2018, I’ve designed my reading challenge as part of my Christmas gift to my brother. He had challenged himself to read 12 books last year, I challenged him to do 40 with me instead, and he ended up at 30 (here’s his list from 2017). As he wanted to try again this year, I created reading prompts that have connections to each of us, along with more general prompts that can inspire us to branch out from our usual genres and topics. A few of the prompts were inspired by challenges I saw online while creating the list. So, without further ado, here’s the “Romero Sibling Reading Challenge of 2018.”
![New Year, New[ish] Goals: “Resolutions” Ideas for Putting the Right Foot Forward in 2018](https://www.evereducating.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/decoration-3033888_1280.jpg)
The new year is here, and with it, new attempts at getting my life in order. As I’ve spent over a year now in the online planner/bullet journal community, rather than having resolutions for 2018, I have goals/habits/plans that I will be focusing on accomplishing in the next twelve months. While I won’t be listing them all in this post, I think quite a few of my major goals for the new year are pretty relatable to other students, academics, and really, any adult. So, I’ve decided to share them with you, along with a bit of personal commentary on my reasons behind each one. If you’re still working on your own resolutions for this year, perhaps this list can help inspire you.
Hello, Everyone! This week’s post will be the last one I write during this fall semester. Unsurprisingly, with all the work I’ve got going on right now, this post will be short and to the point. Even though I didn’t achieve all my #AcWriMo goals, I still think it’s important to wrap it up by writing a final update on how much I was able to get done this past month. Plus, even without completing all my goals, I still feel like I had a really productive month.
The month of November has arrived, and with it another reminder that I don’t have the time I’d like to devote to attempting NaNoWriMo. For anyone unfamiliar with this challenge, it’s the National Novel Writing Month challenge, in which participants attempt to write 50,000 words (a novel draft, or at least the start to one) in one month. I tried this challenge once in high school, but only wrote about 23,000 words (nothing to sneeze at, but nowhere near the actual goal). This November, however, I’m going to attempt a personalized version of the academic writing equivalent, #AcWriMo. I’m not going to attempt to write 50,000 words of an academic project, but I am challenging myself to be more academically productive this month.
On Facebook, I’m part of this amazing group created for and by academic women. In it, we offer each other support and advice related to life in-and-outside of academic settings. We also host a 10 day writing challenge at the beginning of each month. This month, a second challenge will extend through the rest of the month, for those of us who want to participate in AcWriMo. In our group, the goal is to achieve at least 15 minutes of writing every day, rain or shine, motivated or not. A small goal, perhaps, but one I really appreciate for its ability to make me feel like I can accomplish something important to my career every day without also feeling like a giant ball of stress. It’s rare for me to stop at 15 minutes when I participate in these 10 day challenges. And yet, outside of them, I can often go days without doing any academic writing. External accountability, it seems, does wonders for my writing productivity.
