The No Excuses Project: Moving towards a perfect garden

I’m trying to be realistic with this one – there’s only so many projects that can fill up the available free time.  The goal of the no excuses project is  to stop putting off the possible, not how to become a superhero! While a garden is very important to me, it’s not a critical component of anything else.  So here’s the new plan:

1. Relatively quick and non-muddy tasks will happen in the evenings every day that they’re needed. This would be watering, fertilizing, slug bait, etc.
2. Leaving a block of time on the weekends for everything else: weeding, pruning, transplanting and the like.  I’m not going to even try to do more than two hours here and if it rains, it can skip a week without being a problem.

That’s it – nothing fancy or grand, just a basic plan to move things along.

Holding myself accountable

So here’s where I’m at:

• Photography – some research into improving the website and the like, but did not pick up the camera this week  – I need to work on that
• Losing weight – meals are going fairly well and some exercise has happened but not what I committed to myself

All in all it’s been kind of a mediocre week and I’m striving to be more mindful.

Next week: the goal of true love and where I’m getting in my own way – since I found myself making excuses not to address this topic next, it should be interesting…

Technorati Tags: getting organized, lessons from the garden

The No Excuses Project: The imperfect garden

Although I have a secret yearning for a lush and perfect cottage garden like the kind you see on estate travel shows I also  know that’s requires more patience than anything else. At the same time there is weeding, fertilizing and pruning that needs to happen to get it there.  Getting the bare minimum done happens but along with that I discover that I’ve been using excuses to avoid doing more – every time I think a task will take four or five hours I find that I’ve accomplished most of it inside an hour.  How much more would happen if I estimated the task accurately? Even though my garden isn’t critical to work or love I consider it a key part of my home environment – a messy garden is no different than leaving clothes on the floor. It’s unsettling and leaves me feeling critical of myself. It should be something that is joyful, not guilt inducing.

Most definitely my number one excuse is ‘it will take a long time’ followed by the timing isn’t right – usually because it’s raining or I will need to clean up to go somewhere later.  Not a long list of excuses but powerful ones in my personal arsenal.

Next week – the strategy to being a better caretaker

Holding Myself Accountable

So how is it working?  I think I’m doing a little better:

• Photography – I’ve got a rough draft of my first book essay, which is 600 more words than existed last week
• Weight & Exercise – while I haven’t fit in the exercise consistently I’ve done some and I’ve got the month’s food prepped in the freezer. Now that meals are just a microwave away I should free up that 30 minutes in the evening for moving

Technorati Tags: common excuses, lessons from the garden, self-talk

The No Excuses Project: moving past the excuses on weight

So what am I going to do about all the excuses and constraints on getting more exercise?  Like photography, I’m simply going to set my sights a lot lower. Instead of the 2.5 hours a day I know it took in the past, I’m going to commit to 30 minutes every day. Nothing fancy but I’ve got a treadmill, a hula hoop, weights, and the neighborhood. Between those I should be able to keep myself occupied and moving.

I’m also not going to ‘diet’ but instead make enough meals and snacks to stock the freezer for a full month of Monday through Friday. Like brushing teeth I think it works better to make it so routine that you don’t even notice you’re doing it. This last will actually help move other goals forward (thus eliminating an excuse) by freeing up more time every weekend.

My health is absolutely a priority, but it can’t be the only priority which is why I’m taking a more moderate approach.  Cross your fingers for me that I can stick to it!

Holding Myself Accountable:

I’m keeping up with my plan for photography – I’ve selected the images for the first book chapter and gotten some bizarre and fun shots in my yard over the last week.

Technorati Tags: achieving goals, common excuses, losing weight

The No Excuses Project: Losing weight for better health

I wish weight were a purely aesthetic consideration – but, it isn’t when it impacts flexibility and miles hiked. So it’s important for my health and also for accomplishing my other goals. I hate to admit it but it’s been falling pretty much last on the list for quite awhile. Like many, I’ve made some progress in this area in the past and then lost ground when my routine changed. That’s how I got to still having it on my list of unmet goals.  The real power of excuses on this one for me (and I suspect for many of you) is that I don’t really want to do the process – I want the result but unlike photography or some of my other goals I don”t like the ‘doing’ part.  Here are the excuses I know I’ve used in the last six months:

• I’m too tired (who isn’t?)
• I have too many other projects
• I’ll do it tomorrow (it’s raining, there’s nothing on tv, etc.)
• I don’t have the right equipment (this would be easy if I owned that $5,000 treadmill…)

As you can see there’s nothing really imaginative on this list and yet while I suspect the excuses are common, there seems to be a slightly different solution for everyone.

Next week: How I plan to overcome these excuses

Holding myself accountable:

So how’d I do on photography last week? I’d have to give myself about a C+. I did get the camera out for a few brief interludes and did start the first few sentences of that book  but not as much as I’d hoped for.

Technorati Tags: common excuses, health goals

The No Excuses Project: Moving photography forward

So last week was about some brutal honesty on what I haven’t been doing to move photography forward. This week is meant to be a little more constructive in what I plan to do about it.

First off, I’m committing to do my current list of photography projects without any new equipment – I can produce an ebook with what I’ve got, even if it could be better with newer, shinier toys.

Next, artistic mood is as much about habit as real mood. Habits are much easier to continue in a productive fashion even when you feel grumpy. If I can manage to brush my teeth, I can get the camera out at least three times a week even if those pictures are not good for much.

Lastly, two hours a week spent working on the trip book I’ve been planning – the pictures are all taken it just involves editing, writing the essays and putting it together. Even if that means getting up at 5:00 on a Sunday it needs to happen.

Along with that goes continuing to work on the website, social media and the rest of marketing, but that can’t be successful if I save the actual product ’til last.

And a final note – just to let all of you keep me honest I’m going to append a progress report to each post going forward – that way we’ll both know how effective these strategies really are…

Next week: my health-related goal of losing weight and what excuses are at work there.

Technorati Tags: achieving goals, common excuses, The Art of Happiness

The No Excuses Project: Photography as a career

There is no doubt in my mind that nature photography is a key part of who I want to be professionally but you wouldn’t always know it by my actions.   It’s something that has always delighted me from the first picture when my dad held the weight of the old Polaroid with my mom as the reluctant model.

Like anything artistic there’s no guarantee that hard work alone will have the desired results but it’s a certainty that doing nothing at all will not get you there either. I have tried some things that really haven’t panned out which I take as lessons steering me in the right direction but only excuses explain why  I’m not moving forward on the remainder. Specifically to take new pictures on a regular basis (weekly), compile photographs from my grand road trip into a book of some sort and to more actively participate in the market by submitting for artist calls of all sorts.

Here are just some of the excuses I know I’ve used in the last year:

• I don’t know what to do (or where to start) so I do nothing
• I must not be good enough (even though I’ve gotten plenty of positive feedback)
• I don’t have the right equipment (there’s this other lens… and I don’t have Adobe InDesign…)
• I’m not in the mood (here’s the kicker – mood is the primary distinction between a career and a hobby)
• It has never happened before (did you notice I’m not famous yet?)
• I can’t afford it (framing costs a lot)
• I have too many other projects (if I know it will take a long time to see a profit, I let more immediate things take precedence)

Working through the individual excuses over the last several months has let me recognize them in myself more clearly but hasn’t eradicated them entirely. I’ve lessened the impact of some and made some progress on this goal. But there’s still work to do!

Next week: what I plan to do to get this goal back on track

Technorati Tags: common excuses, crafting a creative life

The No Excuses Project: Phase 2

So if you’ve recently found this project or been following along from the beginning you will have noticed the theme of one excuse per week. Yes, that probably could continue to run endlessly but my goal was to make this only a year long project!  So we started with my 26 most common and limiting excuses which wrapped up last week.  Now comes the really hard part of 26 weeks of  looking at goals and where those excuses come into play and whether there are still any lingering remnants (I’m pretty sure there are…)  Since I only have myself to analyze we’ll be using my goals and knowledge of when I call in the excuses but hopefully you will also find something to relate to.

In general here’s how my life breaks out into areas where I would like to make improvements or more progress.  That should work out to about two weeks per topic and we’ll just see how it goes. I hope you’ll be a part of it!

• Career
  • Jewelry
  • Photography
  • Writing
• Relationships
  • Family and friends
  • Significant other
• Health
  • Losing weight
  • Getting in shape
  • Checkups
• Environment
  • Home improvement
  • Garden
  • Chores
• Personal growth
  • Travel
  • Treasure hunting

Next week: The goal of photography and what’s standing in the way

Technorati Tags: achieving goals, no excuses

The No Excuses Project: ‘I’ll do it tomorrow’

Ouch – I thought about using this excuse when it came to writing this post (I haven’t thought of what I’m going to say – I’ll get up early and do it tomorrow…)  So forgive me if this isn’t the greatest prose, but at least I’m getting it done!  The refrain of ‘I’ll do it tomorrow’ or ‘next week’ or ‘next month’ is probably my excuse of choice.  I’ve used it since early childhood as a way to get out of doing the dishes and somehow it never left.  I get plenty done and know how to stick to a schedule but I’m also pretty good at convincing myself that I’ll produce a better product if I put it off.  Sound at all familiar?

The best (if not perfect) solution I’ve found is to remind myself of what I’ll be putting off tomorrow if I have to make time for what I’m delaying today.  So, if I chose not to write this post now then that would mean I would be putting off doing some experimental photography and answering some emails already slated for that spot.  It’s important to me to get those done so here I am typing.  The other part of breaking the habit is to simply sit down and start – somehow the rest of it takes care of itself and I find the task done before I ever found a place I could stop midway in order to pick it up later.  It’s not perfect, I know but it does minimize the excuse.

The flip side that is worth mentioning though is to not regret making a clear choice.  Choosing to delay a task in order to spend time with your grandmother (or granddaughter) is not an excuse, it’s a choice and probably a good one. I grew up in a family that delayed all the fun things until every last chore had been dealt with. ‘Never put off tomorrow what you can do today’ being the favorite refrain. Which maybe why I rebelled so early.  There’s a happy medium to be found and  a big difference between delaying the laundry to help model the solar system and delaying the laundry to sit in front of the TV.

This concludes part one of the project – next week  it will be time to start looking at goals and what’s holding them back.

Technorati Tags: common excuses, procrastination

The No Excuses Project: ‘I don’t know what to do’

Very few of us go through life knowing exactly what the next step should be. So the refrain of ‘I don’t know what to do’ is not a new one. Yet it’s the battle cry of excuses for those of us that have an inborn need to get it right on the first try. I sometimes think it’s a condition similar to dealing with alcoholism – you can be recovering, but never recovered.

If  the excuse becomes the reason not to do anything then it’s not okay. Some of the time we do know what to do next we just don’t want to do it – in which case, suck it up and get it over with!  If there seem to be too many options, make a list and go with the one that seems the most promising – just keep the list so you can come back and try number 2 if the first one isn’t the perfect solution.

Most of all, don’t let yourself get paralyzed by indecision – something I’m very familiar with! Take it in small steps if it seems too daunting but move. Do something.

Next week: ‘I’ll do it tomorrow’ (or next week, month, year…)

Technorati Tags: common excuses, stopping yourself

The No Excuses Project: ‘I must not be good enough’

We all have moments of self-doubt but when it turns into an excuse not to move forward, face fears, persist in the face of adversity we don’t honor ourselves or our talents.  I admit to uttering the phrase “I must not be good enough” a few times, mostly after seeing an Oprah episode of pre-pubescent kids that have international businesses or when I haven’t a clue on how to proceed.  It just seems like divine guidance is supposed to show up quickly and point the way and if it doesn’t that too must be a sign.

It just isn’t that easy and when we limit ourselves with ‘how things are supposed to be’ we cut off avenues of exploration and success.  The last time I checked the Harlem Globetrotters weren’t part of the NBA and yet they don’t seem to be complaining about not making it. Sometimes going down a path previously untrodden is more difficult but it’s also more exciting, because nobody can tell you what’s around the next bend.

For those of us with multiple interests, wanting and trying to wear several hats all at once, it’s worth remembering that it takes something like 10,000 hours to become proficient at something. The more things you add the more your available time is split.  That’s not a bad thing as they can often balance each other and cross-polinate with great rewards, it just takes more patience on your part. Seriously, if you find yourself wanting to stop because you aren’t there yet, add up how many hours you’ve really spent trying to grasp it.  No stopping if it’s less than 10,000.

Next week: ‘I don’t know what to do’

Technorati Tags: common excuses, learning new things, self-doubt

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