New challenge // 30 days 30 goals

October's challenge stems purely from my need to get a lot of things done in a short amount of time. With the move to Germany, my increasing work-load, and aspirations in business and singing, I feel it's so important to take more time to organize and plan my daily hour-count, so that everything important is taken care of, but I'm still moving towards my bigger goals.

It's easy to get lost in the everyday hassle and lose sight of what you're really working towards, or just push those big plans further and further into the future. It happens to the best of us. Better time management is a constant learning process, for sure. I'm definitely not the expert here, but I'm working towards a more balanced and fulfilling life.

This months challenge is to make a list of 30 goals (big or small) and complete them within 30 days. Sounds daunting, for sure, but the accomplishment would be so rewarding. I have a million things I still need and want to get done before my move to Cologne in mid-November (that's soon!). So I'm setting myself a goal to complete 30 of those things before moving away.

As I'm going to spend 10 days at the end of October in Cologne where I can't complete these goals, my challenge will go on until the 9th of November. I'll share the result on the blog in the next "5 things I learned" post.

I'm posting my list of goals on Instagram tomorrow, so if you'd like to follow along on my journey, just follow me there. Or, if you'd love to join me and share your own journey, use the hashtag #30days30goals

So, what do you say? Are you in?

Let's get shit done! (pardon the language)

xo. Hanna

Thoughts on time management

So, it's been a week since I announced my time management experiment. I've made small updates along the way via Facebook and Twitter, and I thought it was time I did an update here as well.

How was my first scheduled week, you ask? And what did I learn? Well, let me tell you...

1) Make a list. I rediscovered my love for writing lists. It's an instant feeling of productivity, as if  making a list is already an accomplishment. A list makes me feel so much more organized and therefor less over-whelmed. Also, a list helps to see the bigger picture - what sort of projects/tasks need your immediate attention and which ones can be pushed back if you lack time.

2) Break down the list. Another important thing I've learned so far is to break all the things on my list down to small tasks that can be done in not more that half an hour. I need small tasks, because I'm an all over the place kind of person. I jump from one project to another whenever I feel like it and get the inspiration and it really helps to have small manageable tasks to deal with in this case.

3) I hate plans, but they help. This connects to the last statement. I'm more likely to follow an inner surge of inspiration than my plan. Also, there's a saying "People make plans, God laughs". My days can be hard to predict, especially on weekends, and that makes scheduling my tasks hard. That being said, I still think that a plan is better than none. It helps me to visualize how much I can realistically get done in a day. I can always juggle things around during the day if need be, but at least I have a framework to start with.

These are the 3 things I took away from this week. I'm definitely going to continue with the time management experiment and find new ways to make my days more productive and most of all more fulfilling.

Have you tried a time management system? Any tips, suggestions, lessons learnt you'd like to share?

Time Management Experiment

Today's post is a little interruption from the crafty goodness I've had on the blog this week. I hope I've given you crafty inspiration to get your creative juices flowing and you can't wait to start making things. For me, when I get creative, I get really creative. There are a hundred possible projects and ideas going through my mind. And this usually happens when I have no time to work on these projects. It's been this way my whole life - I'm the most creative at the busiest times. And these times can get overwhelming real fast because I want to get it all done, and done well.

Lately that's exactly what I've been feeling - overwhelmed. The school year is in full swing and I have so much more work than last year and so much more ambition. So, not only are the teachers asking more of me, I myself am asking more of me this year. And that's the way it should be, really, but thinking about all the work ahead of me, I feel intimidated and a little lost. On top of that, my creative juices are flowing like crazy, ideas are streaming constantly, but I feel I don't have enough time to create the projects.

Feeling overwhelmed usually leads to procrastination. At one point you just give up and do nothing thinking about all the time you don't have, all the project's you can't do, all the work that needs to be done, and so on, and so on. You just don't know where to start. Getting things done seems impossible, so you quit. Sounds familiar?

So, I've decided to take on a little experiment. I've heard and read so much about time management lately, and it got me thinking. What would happen if I organized all my tasks and made a daily plan to get them done. I just read Andi's tips about starting projects and getting things done, and it inspired me to write down all of my tasks and goals for the next month and create a plan to get them done. I used to do to-do lists all the time, but at some point I quit. My main problem was that the lists were never realistic, so in the end I just felt like a failure.

Having this in mind, I'm going to use the last 4 days of this week as a preliminary experiment on time management. I'm creating a list of all the things I want to get done and schedule them into my calendar. At the end of the week I'll see how many things I can realistically get done and can adjust my plan for next week.

I'll try to keep you in the loop on Twitter and Facebook, and of course I'll let you know how my experiment went on Sunday, the last day of the experiment right here on the blog.

Have you ever tried to plan your every day and all the tasks you have? Do you have any advice to share? Or any experiences? Let me know in the comments!