90 Day Transition: Final Report

90_Day_Transition(Read the overview for the basics of this 90 day push.)

Recap and Look Ahead

I’ve had a few goal sets that rocked my world,  changed paradigms for me, this wasn’t one of those. If I was to use a sports analogy this was less Tom Brady and more a journeyman third-string back-up – sturdy and dependable, but nothing sexy.

The reason I’ve shared this “90 Day Transition” with you was to illustrate the process of conceiving/setting/executing/reviewing a goal. I devoted a serious chunk of time (and continue to) working on the Fundamental:Success project because I believe having a formal relationship to success (as you define it) clears a lot of psychological underbrush that damages a lot of people.

Not all goal sets are created equal, but ALL of them are better than not having goals. This goal period for me suffered from a lack of intense commitment, with the result being some weak focus. I’m willing to give this a pass provided I continue to improve. I tend to be a focused person, hence my concern about this – I suspect I:

  • set goals that each required a wholly different kind of focus, and I work better when I can drop the hammer on one thing with all my passion.
  • allowed my goals to come unglued from my long-term goals – which from time to time let the “why am I doing this” demon creep in.

 These are things I’ll focus on in upcoming goals, but before thinking about what’s next, let’s take a minute to review what I got out of the past 11 weeks.

Accomplishments:

  • Completed “Black Nouveau” – as it turned out I didn’t have anywhere near the amount of work to do on this that I thought, so I got a jump on the next novel as a result.
  • Wrote 29,302 words for my blog – I found writing three blog posts a week an interesting opportunity to see what I could come up with writing under a deadline – some great, good and “meh” stuff resulted. I’ll keep developing this outlet – but at a greatly reduced volume, more like one a week.
  • Lost eight pounds – I’d expected to do a lot better on this goal, but I didn’t, so it’s back to the drawing board. An interesting, but slightly horrifying realization, based on previous experience weight should have fallen off me, one obvious possibility is that I’ve experience one of those periodic metabolism reductions we get as we age – meaning I’ll really have to change things up to get the same results. Mortality blows.

Areas for Improvement:

  • Focus – I want to be physically vibrant, creating great art while enjoying life. This is the basic architecture I strive for, it achieving it benefits from simplicity. I will focus on one thing for each of these outcomes.
  • Ambition – I’ve been putting in a lot of time preparing to sell my books and have realized my ambition isn’t to be a great salesman, it’s to be a great artist who makes his money off his art. I need to find support in the sales phase, which till now I’ve been assuming I’d handle myself. Clarity in my ambition will help create more successful goals.
  • Fun – Too often during this past goal set, my time management or scheduling conspired to have me cranking out my goals well into the weekend. When my time management is effective I can accomplish 95% of my goals effectively, with excellence during the workweek – with just a bit of clean up on the weekends. Both the accomplishing of the goals and how I use my weekends can be fun, when I allow it to become my whole week I’m in trouble.

The 90 Day Goals

Black Nouveau Edits – Success
Looking forward to giving “Hard Knox” the kind of brutal rewrite it deserves.  Start page: 120 End page: 145

Weight Loss – Failure
Lose a minimum of 1 pound per week. Week start: 278.0 Week end: 278.0
(Stickk goal: 277)

Blog posts – Success
Write and post a minimum of 3 posts per week.

Psych-Hack: Kill Your Ghosts
Noodling: Quo Vadis with Twitter?
90 Day Transition: Week 10 Report

Key Learnings:

  1. Mediocre intention gets mediocre results: These goals and results were “fine”, but I know what it feels like to aim high and achieve high. I let my focus drift, as a result while I met the technical targets of my goals, I didn’t get a lot of “juice” from them either.
  2. Adapt sooner rather than later: I noted earlier that I think my body may have shifted to a lower metabolic rate. It was clear from the results early on that I wasn’t getting the results I expected, and I didn’t take that as a signal to change approach – which is silly. The entire purpose of having empiric goals is to use the weekly measures to prove or disprove your approach so that you can adapt accordingly – evidently I spaced this out.
  3. Stay clear on your outcome – I expended a lot of psychic energy on developing social media strategies, researching strategies for selling books, and the business around publishing both traditionally and direct-sales. I’m glad I did it, but it was a big distraction from my primary goals – lot of thinking about potentials and things to come distracting from “take action” thinking. This research was also unbound by a deadline – had I set a deadline for publication, the research would have been more action oriented.

In Conclusion…

I wasn’t sure how good of an idea doing my goals “out in the open” (sharing them with you) was, but now that I’ve done it, I think it’s been a solid experience. I hope it’s been useful to you too, perhaps giving you a little extra push to create and pursue your own goals. Over the coming weeks, I’ll harvest the “greatest hits” from these weekly reports and share them.

Having formal goals has been a regular part of my life for five years now, it’s enriched my inner life by not letting weeks, months or years slip by unnoticed or unexamined, and giving every day a little extra frisson. I’ll have new goals on Stickk.com next week, hope to see you there!

“Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.” – Napoleon Hill