Hard work spotlights the character of people; some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don’t turn up at all. – Sam Ewing

Da Vinci’s design for a flying machine. Source: Wikimedia

Da Vinci didn’t have much of a formal education but he had excellent powers of observation.  But most of all, he had the discipline to write down his observations and cull from them at a later date.

The most underrated, but most helpful, skills you can learn are to observe and take great notes.  Observation takes a quiet mind, the ability to sit still for a while with a subject and ask questions while watching and learning.  Being able to take good records of your observations takes time, effort, and a good amount of reflection to glean the most useful information from what you observed.

Look at this list of people who kept a diary.  Notice a pattern?  Politicians, writers, musicians, engineers — they kept books recording what happened to them and what they did.  And most of them were highly motivated and dedicated to their chosen craft or occupation.  They were good at taking notes, and lots of them, on a daily basis.  It may not be necessary to keep a diary, but it is very helpful to have a daily planner on hand to keep you on track toward your goals.

Most people keep a daily planner to write down their appointments and homework, and that’s great.  If you have a specific goal in mind for yourself this year, get *another* one just for it.

If you don’t keep a diary or journal, get a daily planner with pages and dates for the current year.

This is the inside cover of my planner. I used big letter stickers to make the message stand out more, so I notice it every day.

In the back of the planner, In the “Notes” section, write down what you hope to accomplish at the end of the year.  Then think of a general list of things you need to do each week to accomplish those goals.

I wrote an everyday “schedule” for myself, 1 hour each: Exercise, learn Spanish, read, write, business-related, housework, make/create something new.

At the start of each week, write down, at the top of the page, specific goals that you want to accomplish by the end of the week, as related to your year-end goals.

Each day, write down what you ACTUALLY did, instead of what you just wanted to do, or had good intentions of doing, but didn’t.  For example, if your major goal this year is to lose 30 pounds, then every day:  write down what you ate, how much you exercised, what thoughts you had about your weight loss (guilty?  excited?  determined?).  Write what you watched on TV to get yourself motivated, or if you overheard a quote you overheard that day that could help keep you focused.

This is a one-week look at the planner. I wrote my weekly goal at the top “to lose 1 pound and do 3 strength training sessions and 3 cardio sessions.” The daily pages are filled with details of what I ate and did, and how I felt about my progress.

An example could be:

Yearly goal: to lose 30 lbs. of fat; gain muscle; learn to dance; not be afraid of going to the gym; try a CrossFit class; be able to go to the beach next year.   To feel confident, active, and good about myself.

Weekly goal: to lose 1 pound.  How: by making a menu for each day, under 1500 cals.  Saturday will be my “eat anything I want day” and I will go out for a drink with the girls.

Monday, February 25

• Ate a reasonable breakfast of yogurt and blueberries with milk and toast, with 2 cups coffee.  Breakfast felt a little boring, but quick and felt good afterward.  Maybe cut down a little on coffee tomorrow.
• Saw a robin sitting in the tree outside.  Spring is close!  Time to start losing weight to look good by summer.
• Blew my “diet” by eating a small cake pop from Starbucks at lunch.  But maybe it’s okay to eat one every other day, it’s only 160 calories.
• Got on the exercise bike for an hour while watching shows on Netflix.  Watching TV helps pass the time.
• Wanted to drink 8 cups of water today but only had 3.  Will do better tomorrow.

At the end of the week, write down if you met that weekly goal, and reflect on what you may need to change for next week.  This method can work really well if you want to reach some financial goals, prepare to apply for college, get all A’s in your classes, train for a marathon or competition, etc.

If you have something that you really want to accomplish this year, make it a priority to keep it at the forefront of  your mind and move every day toward the general direction of that goal.  Your daily planner may not be as big as Da Vinci’s notebooks, but it just might be the one thing that will get you where you want to be.

How do you plan for your own goals?  What tricks or tips do you have for people who might be struggling to get organized?

In Groundhog Day, Bill Murray teaches himself how to play piano and make ice sculptures while he’s stuck in a time warp.  If you had all the time in the world, what would you teach yourself?  Here are LifeHacker’s Top 10 highly desired skills you can teach yourself.

In the normal course of our working day, or in writing essays for classes, we will often be tasked with coming up with several pages of original writing.  Oftentimes when we’re looking at a blank page or a blinking cursor on the screen, it’s difficult to know what to say.  One thing to remember is that writing is just ideas put down on paper.  Writing is as easy as thinking, walking or talking.  When you eat or sleep, you don’t over-analyze the process, you just do it.  And so it is with writing — you can do it almost as easily as you have a conversation with a friend.

Yet when there’s a writing deadline to meet, it’s easy to lose sleep over it.  Many people have writer’s block not because they don’t know what to write — writer’s block happens when the writer starts thinking about what the reader will think, even before they write down a single word!  Writers often fear they will be criticized, that their writing is a reflection of themselves.  We fear what other people will think of us, fear of writing inadequately, of being boring, sounding stupid, or repeating ideas that have already been said before.  Some writers may be self-critical and think, “Why would anyone want to read my opinions about this?” Othe

r writers may not identify themselves as writers, thinking “I’m a chemist, not a writer.  How am I going to write about my research findings?” But you can worry about what people will think after the writing is done.  That’s what editing is for.  The important thing is to get the job done.

So what do you do when you think you don’t know what to write? Start scribbling!  Take out a sheet of paper and write your topic on the top of the page.  Close your eyes and start thinking about the topic.  Think about what you would say if you had a conversation with a friend about the subject, and go through the conversation in your head.  Better yet, call a friend and talk about the topic, and jot down your conversation.

Give yourself permission to write, imagining that the voice in your head, or even the blank page is saying “Go ahead, write what you want.”  Write down little “pictures” of whatever comes to your mind, if the pictures are one-word answers, or even little doodles of your ideas.  If you are feeling frustrated, start scribbling lines on another sheet of paper, (even poke holes in it if you want to!) until your mind clears again and starts thinking about the topic.  Complete 1-sentence answers such as “I think that…” “The reason why…” “I like/don’t like…because…”

After 30 minutes of scribbling, look at the mess you’ve made.  To an outsider, your scribbles may look psychotic and chaotic, and it should! — considering that our thoughts are often fragmented and run around in circles.  Then start to piece the fragments together like a puzzle. What is your main idea or focus?  What are the sub-topics to your main focus, and what is the supporting evidence?  When you start interlocking the pieces your ideas will start to make sense, forming a logical picture that’s clear to your reader.  Completely re-write your essay using the ideas from your initial scribble-fest.  Your first draft of your essay may not be a masterpiece of a painting, but at the very least it will be a paint-by-number picture that your reader will understand and enjoy reading.  And writing it might actually be fun for you, too.

So you’ve got a project that’s due?  Start scribbling!

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