For most of us, Monday, 6th January will be the first real day back at work after the festive period.

First thing Monday morning provides a great opportunity to make a start on four healthy new work habits for your organisation, your department or you as an individual.

Choose:

1. One thing you will stop doing.
2. One thing you will start doing.
3. One thing you will do less of.
4. One thing you will do more of.

To be really cute (and make your resolutions more likely to stick), make:

• Resolution 2 a substitute for resolution 1.
• Resolution 4 a better option than resolution 3.

May I wish you all a happy, successful and satisfying 2015.

Work that people are happy doing is satisfying. From personal experience, work that is satisfying has the following characteristics:

• it provides moderately challenging objectives.
• it is moderately difficult.
• it demands your full attention.

This is the kind of work that you can lose yourself in. The time spent working passes rapidly and at the end of the day you go home satisfied with your efforts and achievements.

• You will have spent most of the day living in the moment.
• You will have spent little time thinking (or worrying) about anything else..
• You will have been in the healthy, happy, mental state that meditation is intended to bring about.

If the right kind of work can make us happy while you are working, then what does this say about how we can spend our free time?

By my way of thinking, the ideal pastime or hobby would share the same characteristics as a satisfying job...

Together, Chris and I have the Spitfire prepared ready for welding.

We have removed all of the exterior and interior trim, lights, carpets and seats.

Most of the body panels below the car’s waist-line have severe rust and so they will all be replaced with new panels welded in.

Next week the Spit will be loaded onto the back of a truck and transported to Wymondham in Norfolk where Andy Dann, proprietor of Classic Resprays will get to work with welding torch and spray gun.

Front view with bumper, grill and valances removed

The cockpit minus, carpets, seats and door trim

Over the Christmas period Chris and I hade the opportunity to develop our skills in the removal of rusty nuts, bolts and screws. That is a subject for another post…

In November 2014, my family surprised me with a birthday gift; a pea green 1974 Triumph Spitfire IV.

For some time I had fancied the idea of restoring a classic sports car, but hadn’t made a start. So this was a great present.

Spitfires are easy to work on, parts are easy to come by and this car, with its sound chassis, engine and gearbox was a good choice for a project.

This is how the car looked when it was delivered…

I have fitted a new water pump - so the engine runs properly. Next I have to strip off all of the trim ready for the Spit to have its rusty lower panel-work cut away and new panels welded in. This is highly skilled work to be done by a specialist; www.classic-resprays.co.uk

Once the welding is complete, the car will be ready to be resprayed; in all this, should take about 2 months.

My goal is to get the car to pass its MOT by the end of April 2015.