January 2021 has already been and gone. For me, I've tried to work hard but I'm finding it difficult with a lack of routine. I really rely on full-time work to keep me in a routine and I haven't been able to secure a full-time job yet. But that doesn't mean it's been a lazy month! In this review, I'm going to go over how I worked towards my yearly, monthly, weekly and daily goals in January 2021.
Yearly
I completed all my tasks on my yearly calendar and so I was able to cross everything off! The only task I haven't managed is booking a dentist check up appointment because all the dentist practises are closed in the UK currently. I moved it to February but I think it'll have to be put off until March at the earliest.
A really exciting thing happened this month: I got into college to study an excess course for Nursing. I'll start the course in September so this month I've been researching undergraduate Nursing courses to apply for. If you're studying nursing, get into contact with me, I'd love to make connections in healthcare!
My monthly challenge in January was No Spending, with some exceptions (you can read my blog post about that here.)I managed to complete it 100% and I'm convinced that I need to put this strategy into my life every month. I liked that I could reward myself at different levels and this stopped me from impulsive spending. I'm going to try to only treat myself this month as I achieve things, again to reduce my spending habits.
Monthly
My January page was much too small to input everything I ended up planning in the month so I took some space on the other side too. I went to almost everything I'd planned and worked on almost all of my ongoing projects, including this blog and my job hunt.
Reading through my gratitude page reminds me of so many good things that happened this month even though I wish I could have done more.
As you can see in my trackers, I started off with good intentions in my water intake but quickly fell off the tracks. I won't be tracking water in February as I don't think it's very important for my current (sedentary) lifestyle. My sleep is all over the shop, as is my mood and step count. I've been walking outside four times a week to help with health but otherwise I stay indoors. I don't go to bed or wake up at specific times, mostly due to not having that work routine, so I sleep anywhere between 6 and h12 hours per night. I've found that my mood is better when I sleep no more than 9 but no less than 7 hours.
There may not seem much point in posting my budget page as I have removed most of the information here. Partly, I wanted to show my budget page in action. Partly, I wanted to share my living costs. I live by myself and I think I do well at having a comfortable lifestyle at around £1000 per month but if you have any tips on reducing spending, let me know!
Weeklies and Dailies
I won't share all of my weekly and daily spreads but I'll share these two just to show how I organised myself this month and planned my days.
18-25th was the busiest week I'd had in a long time. I ended up devoting an entire page to my weekly spread when usually it takes about half. I use the Alistair method to plan my weeks as I find it's easy to just add things onto the rolling list. I also tracked my outside walks to make sure I was doing them. During this busy week, I used colour coding on a horizontal time bar to track what I was doing so I could schedule in breaks and housekeeping.
Quieter weeks didn't mean any colour coding so I was able to keep my spread very minimal. I don't mark my days out in advance, and I take up as much space as I need. This is the thing that makes bullet journalling work for me the most. I hate being confined to little boxes and this method lets me work however I want to.
What do you think? Is there something you wound have done differently? How was your January?
Thanks for reading,
- Tired Bill
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