318 Holly Worton ~ How to Be Goal Driven & Still Allow Yourself Flexibility

Today’s Guest

Table of Contents

I’m back again, with another solo episode! This week I’m talking about how to balance being goal driven while at the same time allowing yourself breaks, space, and flexibility. This is something I’ve been struggling with lately, and this episode is for me as much as it is for you!

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What You’ll Learn

How to prioritize your goals to avoid burnout
How to manage your goal deadlines
How to know when you might need to take a break
How to know when you might need to re-evaluate deadlines + priorities
Balancing between achieving goals and being flexible

Things I Discussed

She Podcasts Live. If you can’t attend live in Atlanta, the virtual ticket gets you access to every keynote, session, panel, and even some extra curricular activities online. You’ll receive all materials after the event.
304 Holly Worton ~ How To Prioritize When You Can’t Do It All
Asana

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Transcript

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Holly: Hello and welcome to the Into the Woods podcast, episode 318. This is your host Holly Worton and I am back with another solo episode. Today I am talking about how to balance being goal-driven, while at the same time allowing yourself breaks, and space, and flexibility. This is something I have been struggling with lately, and when I say lately I mean the last couple of months. So, this episode is for me, as much as it is for you.

So, what are you going to learn today? I am talking about how to prioritise your goals to avoid burnout. How to manage your goal deadlines to fit everything into your calendar in a way that works for you. How to know when you might need to take a break and how to know when you might want to re-evaluate your deadlines, and your priorities, and kind of shift things up with your goals.

But, before that, I wanted to remind you in case you hadn’t heard that I am speaking with Amanda Cook, from Wellpreneur, at this year’s She Podcasts Live, so this is the very first She Podcasts event which is a conference for women podcasters. It is being held this October, in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States. And, if you can’t attend live in Atlanta, there are also virtual tickets that give you access to every keynote session, panel, and even some extra-curricular activities online. And you get all the downloadable materials and things after the event is over, including access to recordings. So, I would love for you to check that out if you are a podcaster, or if you are interested in podcasting, I think this is going to be a great event, I am so excited. Amanda and I are talking about how to turn your podcast into a book and we have been putting together our talk for the last month or so and I am really, really, excited about that. I think this is going to be a great event and I am really looking forward to it, and I am really looking forward to speaking there. So, if you head over to: http://HollyWorton.com/ShePod you can find the signup link. I am going to include now a cute little ad that Jess and Elsie from She Podcasts have put together and then I am going to come back for the episode. {Ad plays}

Hello I am back! I hope you enjoyed that I don’t usually do advertising on this show, but I thought this is a great event that I am super excited about and, like I said, even if you can’t attend live, even if you can’t travel, if you are a podcaster, or you are interested in podcasting, there is going to be all kinds of different tracks. So for people who are new to podcasting, for people who already have a podcast but are looking to grow it, people who are more advanced stage of their podcast and they want to take it even further, so there are all kinds of different talks and presentations and workshops for all the stages of your podcasting journey.

So, that’s it for now, let’s move over to the episode for today. So again, how to balance being goal driven while at the same time allowing yourself breaks, space and flexibility. This topic came to me because, and I think I have mentioned this before, I had a bunch of projects and goals, for the end of 2018/2019, that really were big. They were big projects, big goals, and they all kind of wrapped up about the same time, more or less. Since then, I have still got goals, but I have been in this kind of weird murky place where I am kind of recovering from that, and kind of feeling bad about not focussing on some of the things that are important to me because I simply didn’t have time, and just coming to terms with all of that. So, to recap, and I am kind of going back to stuff that I was doing last year as well, because that kind of influences this year. So I had my Walk1000Miles challenge last year, which I completed in December, and that was a big deal and it took a big amount of time and it was something that I chose not to do again this year, because I had so many other things going on, and it was just really low priority compared to everything else, so that was something that I had to let go of. I originally thought I was going to set a new goal for spending time in nature rather than actually walking a certain amount of miles, but even that kind of disappeared, I mean I just did not have time to add that into my calendar. Next, I had my kickboxing grading, last December I graded to brown-white, this summer I graded to brown-black, so that was each time, training for it, preparing for it, and finished that at the end of…it was the last weekend in June, so that was another big thing that I had spent months preparing for and then boom! after one weekend it was done and I got my belt. My book, my tree book, which was released this year on April 22nd, that is something that I worked on the entirety of last year and then worked on very intensely at the start of the year and then marketed it, I mean still ongoing the marketing. So that has kind of been a big thing, but it kind of starting to fizzle out a little bit, so that was a huge, huge, project. My bardic grade, Druid training for OBOD, I worked through all of last year, finished that, moved onto the Ovate grade this year, and I haven’t been able to keep up with it. So, this is a grade that generally takes people longer, between three and eight years, and it is definitely going to take me more than one year. I remember when I was first told that this grade takes people longer than a year, I was really kind of disappointed because I like to move through things, and I like to get things done and I like to really focus. And, honestly, with my plant-spirit-healing-initiation-apprenticeship that’s kind of taken over my morning routine, not every day, but it has given me something else to focus on that has an actual deadline, whereas my Druid training does not have a deadline so that has been made a lower priority. Getting my UK citizenship, that was a big thing, I had to study for the test, I had to get all my papers together and that was kind of a project that took a few months and then boom, done, got my citizenship last month in July. And I have got my ongoing plant initiation apprenticeship, which I just mentioned, which has been every month for the last eight months, it is a nine month program, that has been taking my time but we are currently at a break, we don’t have a course during the month of August, so I currently have some time off from that and that has given me space to step away from that, but also I have homework to do that I haven’t done yet, that I need to do before September. I have got the project of renouncing my US citizenship and I have got all the information for that, but I have got some stuff that I need to do, and that still is not going to happen until hopefully some time before the end of the year, but that is another big project that I have ongoing. I had an agreement with my ex-business partner that I have been working through since the end of last year, and I have got all the paperwork and that is still not complete, but it is moving forward. I had another big goal to get my financial situation sorted and that included budgeting and managing debt, which mostly got paid off by now, and opening up some new bank accounts to organise how we make payments and stuff and getting stuff like wills and powers of attorney put together and that we finally got done last month. That is kind of a bigger project that is not completed but I have been working towards that. So that has been all really, really, good stuff.

So this year, looking at my list of projects and goals for this year and the coming months, I want to write a second edition of my South Downs Way book, and as a compliment to that I am walking the South Downs Way again in September, so that is something that is on the list but I haven’t really started it yet. Hoping to write another book this year, which is the one I have been talking about in the last here podcast episodes. I had my summer course grading for kickboxing which I have done, working through the Ovate grade for Druidry, which I said, not really happening. I wanted to walk the Way South Path again because there have been a lot of changes on that path, haven’t done that. I planned to walk the Camino Santiago in 2021, which I know is two years from now, but it is not fitting into my calendar next year because I have booked myself onto two long courses. Yes, so I have got all these projects and goals and things and again this is all kind of personal stuff with the books. But I have reached this point where a lot of things have wrapped up, as I said, so for the last couple of months I have kind of been like recovering, and if you are on my email list I have also been talking about giving myself permission to recover and integrate from all the healing work that I have done, especially on this really intense healing retreat that I did two weekends ago.

So, I am at this weird spot where I have got goals, I have plans, I have got projects, but I am not really working on them in the same, driven, focussed, way that I had been working on all the things that have wrapped up and that has led me to think: what am I doing? Am I slacking? Feeling a bit guilty about not being super-goal-focussed driven, which is how I had been for the previous months and it has led me to think: am I kind of recovering? I don’t feel like I burned out, but I do feel like I needed some time off, or I needed some time to give myself permission to take it easy. As soon as I finished writing my tree book I was really starting to think: what is my next book, what am I going to do next, I need to start on the next book, and then my Master-gut friends told me: no you don’t, you need to market this book that you just wrote, don’t throw yourself into a new book without marketing the one that you wrote. And I knew that they were right, which is why that is what I did, but it felt very unsettling to have finished a book and not be writing anything. And I am still in that weird space where I am not writing anything and it feels wrong, but it also feels right, because I feel like I needed some time off before starting the next project, even though part of my doesn’t want that, part of me wants to go: boom, boom, boom, one book to the next.

So how to prioritise your goals to avoid burnout? I have a podcast episode on that, it was not that long ago, episode 304, which was called: how to prioritise when you can’t do it all and I think that episode is very useful for prioritising stuff in general. So how to prioritise your goals specifically? Write them down, I have mine all written down on one page in my journal and then I put a tab on it so that I can easily access it to update it, but I have all the goals and projects written down for the year, with the deadlines, and with all the sub-activities or tasks that I need to do to make it happen. And, this could also be something that you manage using software like Asana which I do use for managing certain projects, repetitive tasks and things, I will link to that in the show notes, Asana is free software that you can use manage your to-do list. I really, really, like it, but for some reason I also really like having my projects and goals written down in my journal. Somehow that makes it more real for me and then some of those things I kind of duplicate in Asana, like when I was writing my book, and managing all the stuff for launching my book, I had all that set up for a project in Asana with all the different tasks I needed to do to kind of more easily manage that. But keep your projects and goals on something that you can see in one place, I find it easier to have it in one page with your deadlines. And then prioritise them, some things have external deadlines, so with my kickboxing grading that can only happen twice a year, either on the summer course, or the winter course. So if I want to stay on track and do the gradings, I need to get ready for either summer or winter, which is why I was planning to do my brown-white grading in December and my brown-black grading in the summer course of this year, and then I have to wait a year before I do my black-belt grading. I know that is not until next summer and I am already working on training and I am preparing for that because it is a much bigger grading, but it is quite far off in the future. So those are kind of externally set deadlines, again, I can choose when I want to grade, is it the summer course or the winter course, but my school puts the dates for the summer course or the winter course. So look at which goals, or which projects have an externally imposed deadline, those are the ones that are going to have less flexibility, so get those down first in terms of priorities.

Next, look at the internally, self-imposed deadlines, how can you manage things? Which goals, which projects, are more important than others? Maybe some of your goals involve new income streams, and so you want to have those done earlier than something else. Maybe your business or career goals take priority over your personal goal, maybe you want to choose one personal, and one professional goal, to be your top priority in each area. You are going to find what works for you, but the important thing is to manage your goal deadlines based on priority and based on kind of staggering them, so you don’t have a bunch of deadlines coming up at once. So last year with my projects, I had a bunch of deadlines that I had set, both internally and externally imposed deadlines for the end of the year, so I had my Walk1000Miles which was for the year so that kind of naturally ended for 31 December, then in early December I had my kickboxing grading, so that was kind of externally imposed. And then I put the goal, and this was something that I chose, to finish my bardic grade Druid training by the end of last year. I didn’t have to set the date then, but I did, and it was do-able, but it probably would have been easier for myself if I had set the deadline for January, or February. It was fine, but again, those are kinds of things to keep in mind. Also, this year, like I said I had the book which came out in April, I had a bunch of other things going on with the launch which came up in the following months, I had the summer course at the end of June, so I had a lot of things and my citizenship, so I had a lot of things come together at summertime. And again, some of those things I could have shifted, I didn’t need to push myself to get my citizenship when I did, but I wanted to because the sooner I got that meant the sooner I could get rid of my US citizenship, which means that taxes will be easier next year.

So manage your goal deadlines based on what is important to you in terms of priorities and what are the external deadlines that are imposed on you, and which goals lead to other goals. So, like I said, some of my goals kind of build on each other or lead to other goals; I had to grade to brown-white before I could grade to brown-black, before I can grade to black. I had to finish my bardic training before I could go onto my Ovate training; I had to get my UK citizenship, before I could renounce my US citizenship. So, I have got a lot of goals, kind of where one goal is a prerequisite for another goal, so they are kind of long term things with milestones, more than goals they are even projects kind of.

So take these things into consideration when you are managing your goal deadlines and prioritising your goals. And remember, sometimes we can’t do all the things that we want to do, usually we can’t do all the things that we want to do. There are so many more things that I could do if I had more hours in the day, but I don’t so I can’t. So think about what is manageable, think about what is reasonable, and if you want to avoid burnout, which I hope you do, because this is really something that you need to be aware of if you are planning your goals and your projects, so if you want to avoid burnout, really look at your calendar and be honest with yourself about how much time you have to do things.

So, I, this week, made kind of a new goal for myself for the foreseeable future, to meditate 20 minutes twice a day. In the morning that is easy because I have got my morning routine, in the evening I don’t know how that is going to fit in. So I actually, before I started this podcast episode, I sat down with my Google calendar and I thought: well okay, when is that going to fit into my calendar? So I sat down and put that all into my calendar, I have another personal goal of getting to bed earlier, and so I have kind of shifted dinner earlier and then I have realised that I didn’t actually have time in my calendar to prepare dinner, I just had the dinner itself in the calendar, so I have added that. So time-block, like I always say time blocking is really, really, important to ensure that you have the time to do the things that you want to do, so look at your calendar, and be reasonable about how much time you have to fit in this stuff into your calendar. So, when I am preparing for a kickboxing grading, I need to practice my line work, I need to practice the fitness, I need to go running, and all that stuff takes time in a schedule when I am already doing other fitness stuff. So I think I can’t necessarily do two fitness things in one day, or I prefer not to because I don’t want to burn out physically. So, I have limited days in the week when I can go to kickboxing classes and fit in the extra training on top of that in my schedule. So, these are my personal examples, which will hopefully trigger ideas and ways that you can manage your own personal and professional goals. So, hopefully that gives you an idea of how to prioritise your goals to avoid burnout, and to manage your goal deadlines so that they are reasonable and do-able and manageable, also, to avoid burnout.

So if you have got your goals, you have got your deadlines, you have got your priorities, and it is all time blocked in your calendar, everything is beautiful, how to know when you might need to take a break? And how to know when you might need to re-evaluate your deadlines and priorities? So, obviously if you are feeling stressed, if you are not getting enough sleep, if you see yourself intentionally going to bed later and/or getting up earlier so that you can work on the stuff to achieve your goals, and it is taking a toll on your mental and physical wellbeing, I think that is a clear sign that you need to re-evaluate deadlines and priorities, perhaps even take a break. So those are times when you need to step up your self-care, take care of yourself to avoid burnout. And then look at your calendar again, see what you you need to adjust, make sure that everything is time-blocked in your calendar, like I said preparing for dinner – if you are the one that cooks dinner, that needs to be in your calendar because that is time you do not have to do something else.

So, take an honest look in your calendar, take an honest look at what you are able to achieve. Go back to your list of projects and goals and take an honest look about your deadlines and your priorities. Do you need to shift things around? Do you need to extend the deadlines for some things? I always feel so guilty about shifting deadlines or extending deadlines, I always feel a little bit like a failure and that’s not a good way to be thinking, it is not a productive way to be thinking, it is not serving you to be thinking like that. When you need to re-evaluate deadlines and priorities with your goals and projects, that is not a failure, it is being smart, it is re-evaluating your schedule so that you don’t burnout. Failure is such a crappy word and burnout is also not failure, but it is feedback from your body, from your system that you need to not do that again, slow down, take a break and work differently so that you don’t do that again. So, to me, burnout, we have probably all been there, that is a clear sign that you need to do things differently. So if you know that you are susceptible to driving yourself to burnout, you need to be ultra, super, careful about how you manage your goal deadlines, how you manage your goals, so that you don’t burnout. So, manage yourself as a project, manage your time so that you are not burning out with your goals.

So, I hope you have found this useful, I know there was a lot of personal stuff in there, but I think it is important for me to share my personal examples and how I manage them well, and not so well, so you can see how you want to manage your own personal and professional goals. I really pushed myself, sometimes too hard, and I really get, kind of down on myself and beat myself up when I don’t achieve the things that I want to achieve in the timescale that I want to achieve them. So I think this is a message for me, as much as it is for you, in terms of giving yourself permission to be flexible with your projects and your deadlines and your goals.

Obviously this is a message for the super-driven person, if you are the kind of person who is not very driven, and you have been not getting much done then you need to bounce the other way probably. So this is about finding a happy medium, this is about finding what works for everyone, everyone is unique, everyone is different, everyone is individual, and you need to find what works for you in terms of prioritising your goals and managing your deadlines and knowing when you need to take a break. So I talked about staggering your goal deadlines so that you don’t have everything finishing on the same date, but it is also important to maybe take a break so not just going on holiday but giving yourself a break from goals and projects, so maybe you have a month or two months, every year, maybe it is August and December or something like that, where you don’t work towards these goals. So maybe you take that into consideration when you are considering your work deadlines so say if we’re working on a book, I could maybe block out certain months in the year and just plan to not work on my goals those months, not work on the book in those months and that would then extend my deadline an extra couple of months. So perhaps you need to schedule breaks from your goals and projects in your calendar and just do the minimum or work on your other things but take a break from your goals and projects, that might be something that works for you as well, that might be something that helps you to avoid burnout.

So, hope you found this interesting and useful, and let me know. So as always you can email me: [email protected], or find me online and get in touch. Also, reminding you about She Podcasts Live, again if you can’t attend live in Atlanta the virtual ticket will give you access to all the talks and materials and downloads and all that kind of thing. I would highly recommend it if you have a podcast or are thinking about starting a podcast. Like I said there are tracks for every level of experience in podcasting.

So that is all for now and thank you so much for joining me this week and remember to visit: http://HollyWorton.com/318 for the Show Notes on this episode.

And as always the transcripts go live about a week or two after each podcast episode and the transcripts are available to read as a blog post within the show notes, or you can download them for free, no email address required, again from the same link. So thank you very much and have a fantastic week.