Getting My CREW Together

If you’ve met me, you have learned pretty soon that I love lists.  I make lists of lists that I need to make.  With each new year, a sort of tradition of mine is to list my hopes, desires, my “need to do”, and plans.  New years are great for organizing your life like that.

Today I took some time to consider what I want to accomplish on a daily basis for 2017.  Chris has his daily tasks, what he calls his “Three W’s”: Work, Workout, Work of Art.  He does these three things everyday.  It’s accomplishing these three things that Chris feels that his day is complete.

I’ve been trying to figure out what my daily check-off would look like.  I’ve thought about it a lot over the last few months, actually.  But somehow, today, it just clicked.  I call it “Getting my CREW together” everyday.  Everyday I will do something Creative, do Research, Eat (well), and Workout.  And yes, of course I wrote a list of examples for each category.

Creativity:
~ Obviously writing is classified as part of my creative session.  I am on a nearly 30 day streak of writing at least 250 words a day.  Things I count as part of my 250 words are: My blog posts, any work writing or editing for my book, articles I hope to send for publication, recipes for my cookbook, work on creating my Animal Exercise Cards, development of presentations (power points, handouts, speeches), Toastmaster speeches, Social Media Fitness Challenges for ZooFit, Meal Plan Guides, and notes from books I’ve read or Brian Johnson’s Philosopher Notes or Master/Micro Classes on Optimize (seriously, folks, check it out.  It’s TOTALLY worth $10/month for unlimited access to all his stuff).
~ So what if I have writer’s block? Any of the following creative venues can be substituted for actual writing.
~ Cooking, creating recipes, trying new recipes, experimenting with food.  I’m going for healthy and sustainable, and while I’m not perfect, I have gotten close with some of my attempts at playing chef.
~ Ideas: I think if I wasn’t writing a book and had hopes of writing more to follow, I’d probably have a book of ideas I’ve ever had.  I guess you could say I AM writing a book on a couple of my ideas (What if we could save the planet while getting in shape?  What if we could save species from extinction by cooking and eating delicious food? What if we trained ourselves to develop healthy habits the same way animal trainers teach their animals?).  But if I let my mind wander and play imagination games, this is important to me and I should let myself go in these directions.
~Presentations/Programs.  I started ZooFit.  It’s functioning as a kids’ class at CrossFit which isn’t EXACTLY what I envisioned for it, but it’s a start.  I’m doing the Zookeeper’s Guide to Fitness seminar series for Parks and Recs.  I’m running a workshop on creating your own workout equipment.  I’m running an outdoor bootcamp in the Spring.  I program the workouts for me and Chris.  I am trying to get a Nutrition Club (I’m calling it the Grub Club) off the ground.  These are fun and fulfilling ways to get my message out and be very very creative in the process.

Research:
~ Reading is on the top here, but I haven’t been doing a helluva lot of reading lately.  I’ve been writing my own books to share.  But I do have a MASSIVE list of books I want to try to read this year.
~ Optimize Me Philosopher Notes and/or Master Classes.  The Master Classes come with workbooks that you can download and fill in as Brian Johnson discusses the subject.  Most Master Classes are about an hour long and cover topics such as “Setting Goals”, “Willpower”, “Developing Habits”, “Conquering Anxiety”.  Philosopher Notes are 30 minute podcasts where Brian shares thoughts and big ideas from the different books on related subjects to optimizing your life.  
~ Any articles on Conservation, Wellness, Fitness, Nature, Health, and especially any articles that combine the topics.  I don’t see many people discussing anything remotely close to Conservation Fitness, so that excites me as it means I have a niche to fill!
~ Writing Groups.  Writing Groups as part of research?  You betcha.  These are my first readers of my ideas, my stories.  They are my personal research participants in my project.  I value what they say, and work hard to maintain their interest in my work.

Eating (Well)
~Cooking.   Connected strongly with my Creativity aspect of each day, cooking my meals at home is one of the most important aspects in eating well
~ Healthy and Sustainable.  The ultimate goal of nearly everything I do is for my health and well-being (and Chris’).  It is also about protecting and preserving the planet.  So making sure the food we eat is healthy and sustainable for me and Chris, and for the planet is one of my top priorities each and every day.
~ Logging Food.  I have a whole presentation that I give to members at CrossFit about logging food, and I’m terrible at it myself.  I’m getting better.  I have made a commitment that if I eat it, then I put it in my food log.  I use MyFitnessPal, so it’s super easy.  I just need to remember to do it.  Because logging food is one of the best and most highly recommended habits one can have if someone is looking to improve their eating and fitness.

Workout:
~ Cardio, Strength, Flexibility/Mobility.  I should be doing AT LEAST one of these three areas of fitness each and every day.  
~Active Rest.  Hiking, day out in Port Townsend (walking), getting outdoors, doing mobility exercises even on my “off” days.  These are great examples of maintaining a healthy and sustainable lifestyle
~Programming workouts for me and Chris, developing fitness programs like Outdoor Bootcamps, Fitness Challenges, workshops, and fun fitness-themed events.  Of course this is closely linked with Creativity, but part of my healthy lifestyle is enjoying my health and fitness!~Taking time to train my brain by going to the Mind Gym.  Give my brain a workout and keep it focused and fit with meditation, relaxation techniques, and even naps.  Yeah, I totally count meditation as a workout for your mind!

So there you have it, my priorities of 2017.  Every day, getting my CREW together!  What are your priorities for the new year?