Marcia Francois's Blog, page 32

Word of the year and 18 in 2018 update, 3/4 in

Here’s where I talked about my word of the year, fun.

Here’s my quarterly recap at the end of March.

At the end of June, I didn’t recap here on the blog but I did a little recap as part of my half-year review in my bullet journal.

This may speak to some of you but a key mindshift change for me was that I really don’t have to do what I don’t want to do. I’m in charge of my own life.

So I’ve declined invites, changed how I do things here on the blog (have you noticed?), changed other things ab...

Just start – how to overcome procrastination

I’ve been doing the Spring into Organising challenge for the past three weekends and even though I know this, I’m reminded all the time that I need to just start instead of feeling overwhelmed or procrastinating.

It’s spring here in South Africa (although it feels like summer) so the weather’s hot and that could be my excuse. Or it’s book club next weekend and that could be my excuse.

But I’ve been tricking myself in my usual way and saying I only need to do 15 minutes. Which, in most cases...

Lovely limitations

Many years ago, The Nester wrote a 31-day series on lovely limitations.

To be honest, I had never thought of limitations as lovely before that but I’ve since come to see the beauty of having boundaries – physical, time-bound, and digital limitations.

They force you to be more creative with what you have, and for an upholder like me, I love having some self-imposed rules.

Physical

If you have a basket to store magazines, the basket is your boundary. Ideally (and something I LOVE) is using the...

What makes a good memoir?

Bryant Park, New York City

When people tell me they don’t like to read non-fiction, I get what they mean with business-y or other types of non-fiction.

But I do feel like there’s a beautiful segment of non-fiction that is very overlooked, and that is the memoir.

3 reasons to try a memoir

A good memoir reads like a story, especially if told well, and if you generally read only fiction, this is an easy way to access a genre you usually don’t read in a fun way. Good memoirs usually have an inte...

Spring into organising with me (even if you’re going into autumn)

Long-time readers will know that I’ve split out my weekend in 3 ways for a very long time. Those 3 categories are

1) out and about

2) house stuff/ productivity and

3) relaxing.

Depending on the season or what’s going on, some categories will have more tasks than others.

I post my weekend list every weekend on Instagram and the last couple of weeks I’ve been noticing a not-so-strange urge to Sort Everything Out.

We call this Spring Cleaning.

I tend to follow these urges because when the mood...

Let’s talk about values

Connection

I was reminded of something I love talking about recently – values.

Values are the things that shape our decisions and therefore, our actions.

When we feel conflicted or resentful about something, 90% of the time it’s because our values are in conflict or not showing up clear in the situation.

For example, maybe you’ve had a conversation with someone and you have this niggling feeling afterwards. If you stop and ask yourself, “what’s really going on here?” (a question I’ve started...

My annual birthday review

I started doing a review of my year that was a few years ago. This typically happens on the first free weeknight after my birthday.

I make a cup of tea, grab my bullet journal and sit down at my desk to do some actual writing.

It’s actually not important how you do it; just that you do.

I prefer to write so that I’m not distracted by the internet, notifications, etc. but if you don’t have that problem, by all means just type out your answer.

An aside – there’s no magic time to do a life revi...

The kind of books I love to read

I’ve only read one book in this pic so far and didn’t really love it

Give yourself grace

I’ve been so busy during Birthday Season (all four of our birthdays happen in a less-than-one-month period) that I’ve let some things slide.

I started thinking that I need to catch up and get up to date, and all those Upholder-type things, but I decided this morning to give myself grace and just let those self-imposed expectations go.

I may be writing this only for me but I doubt it.

I think it’s meant for you too.

When you’re going through a busy season, let some of your commitments go. Don...

My monthly recap for July

I’m smack-bang in the middle of birthday season at the moment, so I’m not going to wait for the actual end-of-the-month before doing my monthly recap.

As an aside, can you see how this Upholder is breaking loose?! The Four Tendencies deep dive course really helped me to clarify why I do things and question whether I want to continue doing them. When I figure out Instagram TV, I’m going to do a little video on my learnings from the course.

Moving along.

Let’s talk about my highlights for July...