15 Minutes of Fab!

My friend Sheila sent me a post that’s perfectly timed to coincide with a new year: “15 Magic Minutes Toward Kick-Starting Your Writing,” by Daphne Gray-Grant.

I’ve been obsessing about writing since November, when I did my first NaNoWriMo, and the idea of grabbing quarter-hour chunks of time to do something/anything on my novel makes perfect sense.

But then it occurred to me: What if I applied that concept to other areas of my life –– say, my finances (I’m perpetually behind on entering ATMs in my QuickBooks file, for instance)? The more I thought about it, the more I liked it. Besides, that’s rather how I operate at the office; everything I do there seems to be in 15-minutes segments, something an organizational consultant once chided me for (“If you’re doing more than five or six things a day, it’s no WONDER you feel overwhelmed!”). But that’s the way work goes.

So here’s my plan for 2011: I’m devoting 15 minutes a day to four key areas:

• Spirit
• Finances
• Creativity (especially that first draft of my novel!)
• Health and wellbeing

For years in my spiritual practice, those four areas have been front and center on my lists. I figure if I spend one hour a day addressing four tasks in each of those areas, I’ll have a lot to show by the end of the year.

I’ll also add the random wildcard occasionally, such as house stuff, like taking down Christmas lights or whacking shrubs in the yard.

So here’s what I did yesterday, my first day:

• Spirit:  oh man, what DID I do on that front yesterday?!
• Finances: I went to my bank to transfer some money
• Creativity: I revised three pages of Chapter 17 (and somehow that 15 minutes stretched into an hour and a half!)
• Health and wellbeing: I did steps while watching The Biggest Loser!

Here’s to 15 Minutes of Fab! Tune in for updates –– and if you want to join in, share your stories!