New Year Resolutions, Not Again!

A few weeks ago I stumbled on a great little blog and immediately subscribed to it. There were two things I loved about it. One was the level of transparency and unpretensiousness @earningathome established from her very first post.

But what really got me hooked on subscribing and reading all the updates (and some of the archives) is the goal-setting and goal-tracking that are at the core of this blog. At the beginning of each month, new goals are set and at the end of each month they are tallied, posted (along with the proof) and discussed.

Let me switch gears now a bit… I’m terrible at resolutions. Oh, I’ll make them with an abandon. And I”ll abandon them 15 minutes after I write them down. So I don’t do any of that stuff any longer (ok, maybe just a teeny-tiny bit here and there).

Instead, I set goals. I typically write them down on a piece of paper, breath a sigh of relief at finishing this list before the deadline (December 31) and that’s about as far as it goes. Ok, so maybe this is a slight exaggeration. But the point is that once the list is made, it is generally of little help.

Well, this year I’m trying something new for my goal-setting and so far it’s working. As a matter of fact, I’ve got quite a head-start on my goals. I got the idea and the motivation from Chris Brogan’s post, but then changed things around a bit and followed Amber Naslund’s most excellent step-by-step advice (her blog, by the way, is a treasure trove).

So here’s what I came up with (you can click on the image to view full-size):

I added a couple of columns that I thought were absolutely necessary for me, including Reference (I guess I better change the name to Notes) that stores notes and URLs of sites I can reference and use as I work on each task.

Since some of the tasks were one-time and others – recurring, I also needed a way of tracking them other than using the good old checkboxes. That’s why I included the Tracking column. One-time projects’ results are recorded in the One Time Status column.  And I plan on recording outcomes of recurring tasks in the monthly status columns.

As you can see from the screenshot, I got a bit of an early start with my list and got some of the work done last year (along with my new service packages).  

Now, here’s the goalbox for my blog:

The major change is that I’ve decided to concentrate more on participating in conversations others are hosting on their blogs. It is absolutely amazing how many fantastic blogs are out there! (Do you have one? Leave a link to it in the comments and I’ll stop by).

It’s not just fun and a good link-building tool (and admittedly, commenting is a lot more relaxing and less time-consuming than writing one’s own post from scratch). Turns out, it’s extremely effective in building one-on-one relationships.

I will continue writing my blog, but will post only once a week. I am somewhat of a speed turtle of blog post writing. So as I’m getting busier both in and outside of my business, I find that twice-weekly posting schedule is unsustainable. If you are a solo entrepreneur and/or a small-business owner, especially a stay-at-home and/or homeschooling parent, you can probably relate very well to this problem. But I hope that the quality of content will make up, at least somewhat, for the infrequency.

Technorati Tags: business blog, business goals

Related posts:

1. January Check-in
2. Does My Business Need a Blog?
3. How Often to Post to a Business Blog?