The Birthday List

I’ve done a birthday list for the last 5 years. I called them my 36, 37, 38, 39 things list….. and then last year I called it Lovely things to do this year.

My list happened to have 24 things on it. I’ve just done a stock-take and I ended up with 15.2 things done. If you’re wondering how one does 0.2 of something, it’s because I was accurate with the number of new recipes I tried, and with the number of books I read, and those worked out as % as I didn’t fully get to the number I’d intended.

Interestingly, I did much better with the items that were habits or habit-forming activities and totally bad with most things that were once-off items. This speaks to Gretchen Rubin’s theory that, for her, habits are much easier than goals. Hmmm.

There were some once-off activities that got done though, like painting the house! Well, it was one item that involved a ton of co-ordinating and running to the paint shop multiple times (I ended up with 4 tester pots and I’m still not 100% sold on the final colour, but it’s not bad enough that I want to go through the schlep and cost all again – I can live with it for 7 years!).

To be honest, I do much better with big lists 🙂 so I’m wondering how to approach things this year.

I haven’t settled on it in my mind yet but my list is sure to include

some fun – photos, reading, food….
some family and friends activities
some health and fitness goals – sleep and steps!
some giving goals – every year my list has some random acts of kindness and that is one of the easiest things to do
some house goals (the list is still considerable!), and
lots of holiday goals (my absolute favourite!)

At the end of the day, while I make plans, I want God to order my steps and “write” out my days well 🙂