It's the end of the year. Time to look back and forward. At work, we talk about leading and lagging indicators - If you want to make a change, it's better to use leading indicators that will motivate you to do that change. An example of this is setting a goal of going to the gym 3x a week vs. setting a goal of losing 10 lbs.
I don't really goal set a lot of knitting - I have things that I tell myself I want to do, but I don't actually PLAN to do them. I want 2016 to be different, though. So I have 6 things I'm going to do next year.
- Knit for an hour a day. It doesn't have to be continuous. It just has to be 60 minutes. This time can include: the 2 hours I spend every day sitting in the car while Dan and I carpool; the 2-3 hours we spend each night watching TVon Netflix... etc. During NaNoWriMo I realized how easy it was to add writing to your day. Well, I want to add knitting!
- Have no more than 3 WIPs going at a time. I used to be really good at this. I used to have ONE PROJECT that I worked on at a time. I was so confused how people could have more than one. Then I discovered that different knitting patterns are funner at different times. I can't knit fancy lace while watching TV. I can't carry around a blanket in my purse to work on in the spare minutes I have. I like having different projects, but they've exploded to the point where I have so many things going on that none of them are moving.
- No knitting projects in the "dog house" - Why? Because I hit a snag and I set the project aside until I "have time to deal with this." Then... I never deal with it. Poor project sits folded up in a closet forever. Not anymore! I will be dealing with things when they happen. Setting things aside if they really frustrate me is ok, but no packing it up.
- 1 WIP must be an original project. I have so many ideas for projects, but I just don't do them! I'm hoping that this rule will help me.
- Do hand stretching and strengthening every day. I need to get better at this! I do the stretches, but I sometimes forget to do my strength training twice a day.
- Post to my blog once a week. I don't have to read blogs - that's been a ridiculous time ever since Google Reader went kaput ages ago. But I'm going to make a blog post once per week. Setting up articles to automatically publish counts, too.
Six is a lot of new rules to have for myself, but I think that they're easy enough that I can do it! Actually, I'm already doing them, haha. The knitting time I'm squeezing in is leading to projects getting done (what a surprise!)
What do you think? Are you knitting new stuff? I'd love to hear people's suggestions for knitting resolutions and see what other people are doing!