Jun

22

New Creative Directions

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Um, what are you doing on the road?
Um, what are you doing in the middle of the road?

Goals are good. I had a goal for this blog at the beginning of the year.

The problem was that I got so busy I didn’t have time to achieve life’s more basic goals, like showering or taking my kids to school.

Since my last blog post I:

  • Attended an internet marketing conference in San Diego and made some friends
  • Did a small business management course and made some friends
  • Attended some local business events and made some friends

In the middle of all that, I still managed to:

  • Maintain a full-time work-from-home technical writing position with a large technology company
  • Increase my number of Twitter followers from 1481 to 1483
  • Discover a cafe in walking distance from home staffed by members of the Munster family

I began this blog wanting to talk about two writing courses that I found helpful, so here’s a very brief update:

  • I still think Holy Lisle’s course is ‘top-shelf’ for quality and value for money, but you gotta work at it to get the most out of it. This project for me is on the back-burner for the moment.
  • The other course was at affiliateu.net, which has been down for weeks, and without any notice to its members. I just checked again and there’s now a WordPress theme up, so maybe my life-time access for $97 might come good. They haven’t responded to my queries, so I’m keeping my expectations low, like I have about the Australian soccer team at the next World Cup.

I’ve also been working on some new e-books which I’ll mention in due time.

So you could say I have more work on my plate than an outsourced Indian programmer, but I’m still here and you’ll see some changes soon.

Would you like sugar with that?
Would you like sugar with that?

Dec

10

New Year Resolution

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goal-settingI was listening to a presentation about goal setting (yawn) but I liked this guy’s approach.

First, you have to know what your big dreams are. Start with those. Then you break those dreams down into specific actions you need to take to achieve those dreams.

So, work out where you want to be by the end of the year, then where you need to be at the end of each quarter, then each month and finally the weekly steps you need to take to reach those dreams.

This approach means that you don’t write down a list of goals and then never look at them again, but you keep them in front of you as you press towards your weekly, monthly and quarterly targets – tracking your progress against your plan.

I was inspired by this exceedingly practical approach to goal-setting, so I’ve started this web site to track my own progress and share information that might be useful to you too.

Have a great 2009.