Several years back, I began to write monthly to-do lists to help me keep track of what’s on my plate on a different time scale than days or weeks. I share these lists here, and report back each month on what I was able to accomplish.
My January list focused on diving into the new year with energy and intention! Here’s what I was able to get done in the last month:
- Launched all the things! I had three different programs launching in January (a new coach training cohort, a new Slow Hustle cohort, and my first PM by Design course… plus two additional coach training courses for existing cohort members were also kicking off). It was a lot to juggle, but it was also incredibly satisfying to get all the groups kicked off and started in their new learning experiences.
- Posted at least one video on my new YouTube channel. One of my side quests this year is creating new content for a YouTube channel focused on project management in higher education environments. I wanted to start the year with adding content right away and I’m thrilled to report that four videos are live on the channel and I have a regular Thursday posting schedule. I hope you’ll check out the channel and subscribe for updates!
- Hosted my first AMA session. I decided to launch a series of monthly Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions for 2025 on a bunch of different topics. January was all about goal setting and it was super fun to connect with people on this topic. I’m looking forward to the rest of the year’s sessions! You can sign up here to join in live or to review any replays from AMA sessions you miss.
- Collected 2k minutes in the Peloton app. Working out in the dead of winter is always a bit tough for me. It’s cold, it’s dark, and I just want to hibernate and sleep in. I set this goal to help hold myself accountable to getting in my movement practices in the first month of 2025. I enjoyed working toward this goal and spent part of January completing workouts toward a 5k plan on Peloton, which was a fun way to get in some of these minutes.
January offered a strong start to the year and now it’s time to plan for a new month of to-do items! I’m ready to launch into February and see what the second month of the year will bring.
Here are some of the items on my February to-do list:
- Welcome our new chancellor and interim provost. Our incoming chancellor (the equivalent of other institutions’ president) starts the first week of February. We’ve already prepared a lot of onboarding materials, but there will be several meetings to help get him up to speed on all of our projects and initiatives. Our provost also announced his departure in January, so I’ll be involved in onboarding a new interim provost in February as well.
- Participate in a search process for a new leader. We’re about to complete the search for the person who will be hired to take over the interim leadership role that I’ve held for a little over a year. (As much as I’ve loved learning in this role, I chose not to apply to the permanent position.) I’m looking forward to getting the search wrapped up so that we’ll know who our new colleague will be and so that I can think about how to best help transition them into the role later this year.
- Train my own GPT. I’ve been researching more about AI and I’m going to try my hand at training my own GPT (or more than one) this month. I’m excited to see what I can learn! I purchased a couple of courses to help me figure this out, so I hope to complete those this month as well. I’ll report back if I find the courses to be helpful or if I learn anything worth sharing.
- Continue making progress on my edited collection project. My co-editors and I got our contract signed for the edited collection we are working on related to coaching in higher education (hooray for book contracts!). Our book deadline is coming up this spring so I’ll be finalizing my chapter contributions (I have three in the volume), working with contributors on final edits to their chapters, and getting some other administrative tasks done to move the manuscript forward.
It’s going to be a busy month! What are you looking forward to in the month of February?
