Well, That’s Not Happening
When your goals are WAY too optimistic
It’s half-way through the month of July, and I finally admit it. My goals were way too ambitious.
In my post pledge, I pledged to create 10 Notes a day. I’ve created a total of 53. That’s more like an average of 3 a day, or less than a third as many as I’d pledged.
I also pledged to write 30 responses a day. I did better there. In the first 18 days of July, I wrote 292 responses. That’s about 16 per day, or a little over half as many as I’d pledged.
There were a couple of reasons for this.
Reasons things went south
1️⃣Starting a 30-day pledge on a holiday weekend when you’re doing major networking for your business is not a good idea. The business takes all your time. Takeaway: Consider calendar before making commitments.
2️⃣I guessed at the number of Notes and responses I could create in a day to come up with my targets. When I sat down and did nothing else one day, I managed 7 Notes and 34 responses. But I couldn’t afford to do nothing else, because I still needed to write my 7 short forms and 5 long forms every week. Takeaway: Before setting a goal, understand how much time you need to do a task, and how much time you have available to do it in.
3️⃣I forgot to account for the fact that in order to respond to something, I first had to read that something. Many of the things I wanted to respond to were lengthy articles. That meant 5–15 minutes of reading before I could even begin writing my response. Takeaway: Before setting a goal, understand the full scope of all the actions required to meet that goal.
Reassessing and planning for the rest of the month
My goals for the month were to make it into the top 2,000 Medium writers who get the $500 bonus for June, and reach 500 followers. The best way I can do that is to write excellent articles with lots of read time.
As of today, I’m on track to break into the $100 club this month — if the second half of the month matches the first half, I’d make $104. So I still have a shot at the first goal.
Also as of today, I’ve managed to reach 320 followers. At the current speed of follower signups, I’ll be lucky to reach 400 by the end of the month. That would still be great, over 1.5x growth. But it is nowhere close to my target.
So for the rest of the month, I’m going to focus on my primary goal of producing excellent articles that high-visibility publications want to publish.
I’ll continue to write responses as appropriate, and read and respond to articles in the high-visibility publications as time allows. I’ll probably write 10–20 a day. That’s a sustainable level.
And I’ll continue to enter Notes in my Zettelkasten. I now have four books that are hedgehogged with tape flags. Each tape flag represents a note. Each book has 40–60 tape flags sticking out of it. At 3 Notes per day, it will take nearly a month to enter one book’s information. And I add a new book to the stack every week.
Clearly, I need a more sustainable method of creating and entering Notes. Perhaps I am making too many Notes for each book? Are there ideas I’m recording that will never go anywhere? I don’t know, since I’m just starting out on this process. So I’ll keep up with my efforts, and see if I can develop a sustainable system.
Conclusion
For best success in a 30-day challenge, it helps to set challenging but attainable goals. That means:
- Consider your calendar before setting commitments
- Understand how much time you need to do a task, and how much time you have to do the task in
- Understand all the actions required to complete a task
And if you find you’ve estimated incorrectly, reassess and re-prioritize! You may still be able to reach your ultimate goals, even if you can’t reach all the subgoals you created for your challenge.
Moreover, never stop learning.
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