Goals Overhaul and Refocusing

What? It’s barely been over a month and the goals are changing?

Last year I was actually more successful than this blog seemed to imply. That’s because I didn’t keep things up to date. I’m glad I started out with something last month since it got and kept me going, but I wasn’t really inspired all that much. Might have to do a blog post in inspiration later (note: it’s not necessary, but you shouldn’t ignore it). I’ve kind of redirected my focus a bit based on changes in the landscape and things I’ve learned and whatnot, so let’s go.

Focus of changes

The first focus is to bring the list of goals down in number (but not ambition). I knew when I wrote them that there were too many. Too much energy focused too broadly ends up benefiting nothing, really. So, bring down the raw number of goals, and focus the direction of the goals.

Simple enough.

I just had to come up with a direction to focus in. Well, here’s a high level summary of the focus changes:

• Reduce the volume of effort spent on self-promotion for technical skills – This had been set up as kind of a sprint instead of a marathon. I like the core ideas I had here, and I think professional development is important, but I was assuming more than 1 article a week. The only way that’d happen is if they’re low quality or I spent literally all my time on it. Not worth it right now.
• Return to the novella idea – I’ve queued this one up a couple of times now, but that’s just because I can see it working. I can imagine (almost) every moving piece, and see it paying off. There are a variety of reasons I’ve picked this route again, but a lot of it is that it lets me do something different than my job.
• Free up time – I don’t want free time, but I need to empty up some time to return to the novella focus. Unfortunately, that means things that are big giant time sponges get cut completely.
• Think a little more about money – I’m not aiming to be making stacks of cash this year, but I want to keep an eye there. Instead of focusing on building my public perception and such so much I want to work more on building (a) business(es). Reputation is great, but it’s not enough on its own.
• Oh yeah, mobile development – This is only showing up as a bonus goal, since I don’t care that much, but I think it’d be fun to start building free mobile games w/ads. Might be something there, might not be worth the time.

Updated list

I’m not going to do a point by point discussion. Most of the reasoning for the remaining items was already explained, and I mentioned the general reasons for the removal of items above. Also, several numbers changed, and describing that seems like a waste. So here’s the list:

1. Lose 80 pounds
2. Bike (or stationary bike) 100 miles in under 7 hours
3. Study for and take the JLPT N4
4. Get a new technical certification
5. Write 30 posts on Not Final Code
6. Win NaNoWriMo
7. Publish 3 novellas on Amazon, etc
8. Review 2 technical books
9. Have 500 Twitter follows across accounts
10. Be mentored by 3 people more successful than me
11. Make money from 2 more sources.
12. Make $5000 in side income.

Bonus Goals:

1. Lose 120 pounds
2. Write 20 new posts on matthewekenstedt.com
3. Have 1000 Twitter followers across accounts
4. Make money from 4 more sources
5. Make $10000 in side income
6. Created a publishing company (entity or LLC)
7. 60 posts on Not Final Code
8. Review 5 technical books
9. Self-publish a technical or non-fiction book
10. Get 2 new technical certifications
11. Completed the Genki I Textbook + Workbook
12. Completed the Japanese in Mangaland Series and Kanji in Mangaland Series
13. Completed 5 chapters of the Genki II Textbook + Workbook
14. Release a mobile game

Q1 (remaining) Goals

Just a breakdown of the above, so I can focus a bit more on specifics each quarter. The struck out goals are from last month, but still kind of in play. Greyed out items are completely dead. I’ll update where I am in early April and have Q2 goals – some of them are done already.

1. Lose 40 pounds
2. Get a certification
3. Write 6 posts here
4. Write 10 nfc posts
5. Write 20k words in new story
6. Rewrite NaNoWriMo 2015 story
7. Get 200 Twitch followers
8. Get 250 Twitter followers
9. Have 1 mentor
10. Have a name and begin legal work to make a publishing company
11. Write a novella series plan (each novella’s story + overall story in general)
12. Write (draft) a novella