03-03 Groundhog Day Resolutions Review

When David Seah suggested the monthly review of Groundhog Day Resolutions, I thought the idea was brilliant. It is one thing to have goals, but another thing to actually review how you are doing on them. Little did I know how quickly a month passes.

This post has been difficult to write, which is why it is several days late. Two things has made it difficult. First, I don’t think I’ve been very successful in my resolutions. Second, (which is probably what led to the first) I didn’t get a chance to fully flesh out most of the goals.

I have listed each resolution below and provided a description of my successes or failures of each goal. Finally, I end with a status: Unsatisfactory, Could Do Better, Satisfactory or Distinguished based on how I felt I did on each. A few goals below I have closed as I have not found it effective to track them here.

The goals

Be fit
I posted an expanded Be Fit goal. The goal has involved losing one pound per week from the beginning of the year until August. In the first nine weeks of 2007, I lost 14 pounds, which is above my goal. The weight loss was through diet only, as I have not had much time to exercise. I did order the part for my weight machine, but it has been backordered.
Goal status: Satisfactory.
Write More
I hadn’t the change to write up more for this resolution. In 2006, I started with a goal to write longer posts and aimed at a word count for each week. It was a miserable failure that resulting less writing. Toward the end of the year, I started a three post-per-week schedule which worked out pretty well.
My goal for this year was to continue to follow the three post schedule. My goal was to make 100 posts for the year (two per week) with an outstanding goal of 150.
During the last review period, I posted 9 times in 4 weeks which means I posted about twice per week. It will not be possible to meet my outstanding goal for the year without posting more times per week from here on out.
Goal status: Could do better.
Business Development
Because business development is not a personal goal, I’m not going to continue to track it with my GDRs.
Goal status: closed
Remember important annual events
I remembered all important dates in February, and sent birthday cards to everyone for whom I had an address. One other person’s birthday I only partially remembered (I couldn’t remember the exact day for sure) and sent an email.
Goal status: Satisfactory
Deliberate Dates
I took The Wife to the Performing Arts Center to see Sweet Charity (with Molly Ringwald!) as part of our season tickets.
I took our eldest son skiing at Brule.
I tried to do small things with each of the boys on a regular basis, but didn’t do too much as a planned event. The most fun was building a snow fort in the yard when we finally got some snow.
Goal status: Could do better.
Be green
This goal has been nebulous at best, so I think I’m going to drop it. Just to calm the fears of all you hippies, I’m still going to work harder to recycle, and I think I’m even going to start buying fluorescent bulbs to save some energy.
Goal status: closed.

The beauty of regular goal review is the ability to modify the goals based on their effectiveness and course corrections over time. As you’ve read, I dropped a couple of the goals that I’m not convinced belong here, and I’ve been able to see a few places where I need to be more careful in reaching for success in the upcoming months.

Here’s to 04-04!

Posted on March 6, 2007 in GTD and Lifehacks. 2 comments   

2 Comments

  1. Dave Seah said:

    I’d say any progress at all is good progress! I think that as we track, we might find out what our regular rhythms are, and then use that as a baseline for further improvement.

    A question that I’ve been asking myself, when looking at my goal progress, is to note what I seemed to be doing instead. Two things loom large in my case: slippage of starting tasks due to looking for things to entertain my brain, and a growing realization that there really are not enough hours in the day to maintain rapid growth in multiple areas at a time while maintaining. The business of being a person is a full time job, and maintenance costs alone take up more than 50%…hey, that might be fun to write about! :-)

    March 6th, 2007 at 6:55 am
  2. Jeremy said:

    >and I think I’m even going to start buying fluorescent bulbs to save some energy

    Don’t do that until Wisconsin runs its promo deal where you can get bulbs for 99 cents. Wisconsin focus on energy runs this like twice a year. That being said it’s probably costing you more money by not replacing them now. I saved about 10/month by replacing all the bulbs in my house with CFL. I like the lighting better too.

    Of course you know CFLs are so 2006. If you really want to be green you should purchase LED light bulbs. Prices are a little high still, but they use a fraction of the electricity that CFLs do and they don’t have toxic materials like Mercury in them. Plus being a geek you got to love the LED.

    CB has a solar panel on his house. You could do that too, I think you get a tax credit for installing it.

    BTW I’m getting in shape again too. I’d link to my post apparently my site is down again…..time to finally make the move to SubText

    March 6th, 2007 at 12:44 pm
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