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This year, we’re sharing our tips on goal setting success for New Year’s Resolutions. This is the fourth post in our series. So far we’ve posted tips for rewarding yourself, visualizing success and focusing on goals that are important to you. Today’s topic is sharing your goals with others and building your own support network.
Tip #4 Share – Studies prove that when you speak your goal out loud and share it with others, you increase your chance for success. This is a great way to also build a support system and to enlist others in helping you reach your goal. This also creates a sense accountability to yourself and to your friends. Those who support you will want to know how you’re doing along the way.
Decide on who to share your goals with, share with them the specifics of what you hope to accomplish, the end result you’re shooting for, what steps you’ll take to get there, and ask them to help hold you accountable. You might even determine a frequency and format for how that person can “check-in” with you to ask you about your progress.
Do you share your resolutions and goals with your friends and family? How have you created a support system? We want to know!
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This is the third post in our series about goal setting success for your New Year’s resolutions. Its also tied in to our Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge. Double dip!
Our second tip was about visualizing success. The road to achieving your goals can be a long journey, especially if you have big goals. In Goal Setting Success for the New Year: Visualize we suggested visualizing your success. Today, we’re sharing tips on how to narrow down your list of goals and focus on specific ones that will make the biggest difference to your work or life right now.
Tip #3 Focus – Its great to keep a Master Goal List so that you don’t forget all of your ideas and things you’d like to accomplish someday, but pick one or two to work on at a time. Think about shorter-term goals. For many people, making a resolution for the whole year is too difficult. Focus on re-wording your goal so that you can accomplish (and celebrate) it in parts, if needed.
Time for the Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge! RIGHT NOW spend ten minutes tossing lofty, or outdated goals off your resolution list. Also take this opportunity to cull your list of “other people’s goals” or “shoulds”. Bring that list down to goals that are important to you right now, that you really WANT to accomplish (for you, not for anyone else), and that you look forward to spending your energy on this year. Ten minutes is enough time to remove goals from last year that you already accomplished, or that you’ve decided not to pursue, or take off any goals you don’t think about often or that aren’t relevant. Focus on just a few goals or make short term goals to be more successful this year.
Take our challenge now and tell us how it went! If you have ideas for a Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge, please let us know! In the meantime, check back weekly for a new challenge and make sure to join in the fun. We look forward to hearing about how you do with the challenges.
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This is our second post in our new series about goal setting success for your New Year’s resolutions. Our first tip was about rewarding yourself along the way. Achieving your goals is a long journey, in Goal Setting Success for the New Year: Reward Yourself we suggested celebrating your small achievements along the way. Today, we’re sharing tips on how to visualize success in part two of our series.
Tip #2 Visualize -Visualize success. Write a statement about how you’ll feel and how things will look once you’ve achieved your goal. Post pictures or visual reminders in strategic places to keep you on track. Keep a journal or log of your progress – write in daily results and make plans for what you’ll do the following day to help achieve the goal. Review your visual aids daily.
What are your New Year’s Resolutions this year? How to you visualize success? We want to know!
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The time for setting New Year’s Resolutions has come again. Do you have lofty expectaions of what you’ll accomplish each year, but find it can be challenging to follow through and stick to it? It can be hard without a plan. Let Simply Placed help.
This is the first in a series of posts about how to achieve goal setting success in the new year (or any time!). Join us in making your resolutions/goals successful this year!
Tip #1 Reward Yourself – What will accomplishing your goal mean to you? What will motivate you to stick to it and reach the desired result? How will you reward yourself for accomplishing your goal? Choose something that you’ll look forward to. Post a picture of it in a visible place. It could be a tangible item that you’ll treat yourself to, or an experience, or even the gift of “downtime”. Depending on the degree of difficulty of the goal, choose a reward that is appropriate.
But, don’t just wait until the goal is achieved to reward yourself. Celebrate “wins” along the way to ultimate success. Decide ahead of time on some “mini-rewards” so that you’ll have something to look forward to in the short term and the long term. How can you reward yourself for accomplishing the milestones along the way to the end result?
Reaching a goal takes dedication and hard work. You deserve more than a pat on the back.
How do you choose your goals? What have you used to reward yourself? We want to hear your ideas!
Stay tuned next week for more tips on Goal Setting Success.
Happy New Year! May 2012 be fabulous for you both personally and professionally. We plan to make it a year to remember!
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Its here! After many announcements over the past year about “upcoming” tolling on the 520 bridge connecting the Eastside communities with Seattle, today is the day that tolling officially begins.
The Washington State Department of Transportation is encouraging drivers to get their Good to Go pass. Buying a pass will save you money when you need to make the trip across the bridge. (Thinking that you’ll avoid 520 and just use I-90? That may work for some, but if 520 is the most direct route, and traffic is increased on I-90 because of lots of drivers with the same idea, then you’ll want to keep you best options open – you may find its worth it to pay the toll to avoid increased traffic and reach your destination sooner).
Drivers who cross without the Good to Go pass will pay an extra $1.50 per trip so Simply Placed has gathered some important information and great tips about this big change. Here are 5 steps that can save you time and money:
1. Buy your Good to Go pass at Fred Meyer, Costco, Safeway or QFC. It’s only $5.00 for the pass itself (less at Costco) and having it will save you $1.50 each trip which can add up fast. You can also purchase one online.
2. Don’t forget to activate your pass online or over the phone. Activating your pass links it to your vehicle and adds money to it for tolling costs. When you activate your pass, you will be required to create an account and put a minimum of $30 on it so have your credit card handy when you make the call or log on. Also, don’t be alarmed when activating your pass online and the system drops the last digit of your pass number. The automated system is supposed to do that, the last digit is unnecessary.
3. Purchase a pass for each of your cars. Passes cannot be moved between your vehicles! The pass you purchase at your local grocery store will be connected to your specific license plate once you activate it online.
4. Adhere your sticker pass to the right place! Attach your sticker pass to your inside front windshield below any metalized sun strips or visor tints. The top of the pass should be no more than six inches below the roof-line of your car and at least 2 inches below the rear-view mirror stem. Check out other placement tips from the DOT here.
5. Don’t assume you’re exempt. Only a few vehicles will be exempt from tolling and even if you’re a carpool or a vanpool, you still have to pay up for every crossing. Only emergency vehicles and tow trucks clearing accidents will be exempt from the toll.
Don’t have time to follow our tips and get your pass before your first trip across the bridge? No problem, you can still cross but it will be more expensive. A camera will take a photo of your license plate and you will be billed by mail. Still have questions? Check out King5’s article Top 10 questions about SR 520 tolling.
Want to think about ways to reduce crossings, further saving you time and money? Check out the post we did with some suggestions earlier this year, when the tolling was first announced.
Let us know if your work, travel or personal plans, routes or routines will be altered as a result of the tolling. Here’s to smooth sailing, or more appropriately, smooth driving, as you motor about the Puget Sound area.
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The post-holiday slow down is here. Can you feel it? Does it seem hard to get things done this week? Lacking of motivation? Maybe you’re ready to check some things off your list, but you can’t reach anyone or get calls or emails back. Difficult to focus on “normal business” this week when it seems as if everyone else is on vacation, taking the week off, or just ”kinda working”? Check out this article from Fast Company for some ideas on how to utilize the rest of this week productively and position yourself to start off 2012 strong. You’ll tackle some things that are best done during more “quiet” down time anyway, or that are often put off when things are moving quickly.
Let us know how you use your downtime or take advantage of your quiet office this week. Oh, and if you’re one of the ones truly on vacation, then relish in the rest, relaxation, recreation and rejuvination that are sure to result. Enjoy!
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Time for the Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge! RIGHT NOW spend 10 minutes tossing your old, broken and tired decorations while you’re putting them away for next year. Ten minutes is plenty of time to sort through your holiday decorations while you’re boxing them up for storage until next winter. Are some of your wreaths faded to an unacceptable shade of greenish-yellow? Do you have a strand of lights where so many of them are broken you wonder how it ever turned on in the first place? Some electrical decorations can become hazardous as they age, take this opportunity to embrace our challenge and tell how how it went!
If you have ideas for a Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge, please let us know! In the meantime, check back weekly for a new challenge and make sure to join in the fun. We look forward to hearing about how you do with the challenges.
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Time for the Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge! RIGHT NOW spend 10 minutes tossing out your old used candles before you have your extended family over for that candle-lit holiday meal. Ten minutes is enough time to identify those long tapers with cracks, toss those candles that are so over-used you can no longer light them and discard any lopsided candles that are always dripping wax on your tablecloth, counter, etc. Even if you think you could make that dangerously-cracked candlestick work, it isn’t worth the risk of setting your holiday table-scape on fire.
If you have ideas for a Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge, please let us know! In the meantime, check back weekly for a new challenge and make sure to join in the fun. We look forward to hearing about how you do with the challenges.
Take our challenge now and then tell us how you did!
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Time for the Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge! RIGHT NOW spend 10 minutes on your child’s room clearing out broken or unused toys to make room for new gifts from the holiday season. Ten minutes is enough time to sort out gently used toys that can be donated to charity, discard broken toys and roughly organize what toys are left so they are easier for your child to access and away from high-traffic areas and doorways where they could be stepped on. It’s time to toss those old toys to make room for the new so accept the challenge and tell us about your success below!
If you have ideas for a Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge, please let us know! In the meantime, check back weekly for a new challenge and make sure to join in the fun. We look forward to hearing about how you do with the challenges.
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We recently blogged about several ways you can eliminate all kinds of unwanted mail in 6 Easy Ways to Eliminate Junk Mail. Now we have a tool to share with you that will do all the work for you! It also makes for a meaningful gift that everyone needs this time of year when our mailboxes are filled with unwanted catalogues and junk mail coupons.
For $6.75 you can give someone the gift of less by getting them a MailStop Envelope. MailStop will send you a post-paid envelope to put your unwanted mail in. Once you send it back and they will finish the opt-out process for you! MailStop Envelopes are great for people who are too busy to use online services, not Internet-savvy or have never gotten around to stopping their unwanted mail.
MailStop Envelopes save trees and reduce clutter by stopping unwanted mail. Prepaid MailStop Envelopes make simple, practical gifts for your friends, family and co-workers, your unwanted mail goes from your mailbox to the envelope without cluttering your home or office. Once you have collected up to 15 pages, drop the envelope in the mail and relax while someone else cancels all that unwanted junk mail and phone books for you.
Have you wanted to stop your own unwanted mail? Do you know someone who could use a gift of less? We want to hear about it!
