Goals | Casey Yardley

A few ideas to make tomorrow better.

Posted on March 3, 2023 by Casey Yardley

I’d like to start doing three things each night before bed to improve the following day.

First – Prep the coffee machine. Until recently, we used a french press for our morning brew and it was simple. Add water, steep the grounds, pour cups of motivation, and rinse. Now we have a machine that could be programmed to have me a cup at 7:30 am each day if I would set it up. I have yet to do that so in the meantime, I’ve started adding water, a new filter, and grounds for the next morning. So when I’m ready to go when I push the brew button. Easy peasy but a life changer.

Second – Read more before bed. I had a great routine of reading before bed for nearly a year. It was a great way to end the day and begin resting. I would usually read a cookbook, a self-help-style book, or a history/adventure book. Something that was engaging yet easy to read. Anything complex would get my overactive mind moving back toward my phone and the mindless searching and scrolling. Reading at night helps me rest up better than staring at my phone as a fall asleep.

Currently, I have a list of four books I’m planning to read this month:

The Nordic guide to living 10 years longer – Dr Bertil Marklund
A Portrait of British Cheese: A Celebration of Artistry, Regionality, and Recipes –
Angus D Birditt
Winning Without losing – Martin Bjergegaard
Open Design Now: Why Design Cannot Remain Exclusive – Bas Van Abel

I suppose here is my commitment to myself and to you. I’ll read 30 min a night before bed for all of March. I’ll follow up on April 1st.

Third and lastly, plan my day ahead. I hate task lists with all my being. They annoy my free-spirited nature but make or break the following day’s productivity. I need to use my task list on my phone better as a companion to my calendar to better plan my life out.

My partner is a master of this but me, a serial procrastinator, I do just that… Procrastinate my planning and have less productive days than I would like to. The value here is knowing what needs to be done and being able to do it one task at a time. Knowing myself I’ll do the easy tasks first then move to the more difficult ones as late in the day as possible. I ought to fix that.

So here goes nothing, three simple tasks that are going to help me have a better day tomorrow. Here’s to a month of coffee prep, planning, and reading before bed to make my next day better.

Till next time.

Casey

Education and Work.

Posted on July 17, 2022 by Casey Yardley

I’m saying it.

My years in college have drug on far too long.

Work isn’t the worst but it takes up time in my day that I could be doing more enjoyable things.

I guess you could say that waking up in the morning to look at a screen, talk to people, troubleshoot, consult, run scenarios and coach people on how to ____ is an interesting way to spend my day.

Then after my shift is finished at work I close my work computer and open my personal computer and log onto the school site and begin nearly the same amount of time each night learning about what I do in my day job from a different perspective. It’s interesting to be this far in my career and still be a university student at night. It’s not a sad thing, just a draining one that has caused me to feel older than I am yet younger than I am because my time at university has extended far past the usual years one would traditionally spend as a student.

I enjoy learning but dang, I’ve been spending too many hours in a desk at university.
https://www.pexels.com/@cottonbro/

Am I mad or sad about this? Sometimes.

Am I grateful that I have been able to attend college and further my education for the workforce? Yes.

It’s a real balance of thought for me to have always seen the value in a degree. My father never completed school but has ran a business effectively for nearly 40 years, having learned meaning things on the go and as they come up on a need to learn and know basis. I’ve always been of fan of learning things that way so I understand the application of the information rather than just a theory.

In school I’ve often been told this could happen but is unlikely so we’ve decided you need NEED to know it and its going to not make any sense but, you need to learn it to move forward and enter the workforce. That has never made sense to me spending so much time of “What if..” and not effectively running through real world tasks that I can use right away in my day to day work. I once had a class in 2018 where a professor shared data from a pre internet marketing era expressing his belief that the internet would fail sooner or later and print ads still held their weight as the primary marketing we should be running. It was a wild time.

All the “What if…” of school makes me think of this moment from Hercules.

Yet, I’ve seen many people step into university with one plan for their life and walk out with a completely different passion after taking the lower level intro classes. So for some the value changes as they grow and develop. I too changed my major a few times when I started school and yet business and marketing keeps me anchored as my goal for a degree.

I suppose these are just a few of my unorganized thoughts on education and work, with the focus being on school and how I feel about it. I do see an end finally after nearly a decade as a part time student who had worked full time and beyond during that time. I’ll finally see my degree in the spring of 2023.

Thanks for reading,

Casey

Failing To Follow Through: Where I Am.

Posted on February 5, 2022 by Casey Yardley

I like many others start out a new year with ambitions to do more of ____, less of ____, and just enough of ____. While I set off each year with good intentions somehow I only see about half of my goals through. This becomes increasingly frustrating year after year and seems to set my vision lower each year as I fear I cannot reach a high bar and see it through to completion.

If I’m being honest I feel like I’ve started out this year much the same as mentioned above. My mind dreams up big opportunities and rarely do I write these down or move them past the idea stage. It causes me to spin in place, become distracted out of necessity, and finally a little less confident than I was before. This is a strange place that I never thought I would be in as an adult and a younger me might have a few thoughts on how unproductive and unsuccessful thirty-one-year-old Casey is.

There isn’t a lot of fear in sharing these truths because I know I’m not alone in feeling this way. I’m not alone in feeling things have happened differently than I expected them to.

All I know is where I am today and where I hope to go moving forward. I’ll share more about my desired destinations in my next post. Until then enjoy this graphic I found on LinkedIn.

-Casey