Goals

No New Year’s Resolutions

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I have decided not to make any resolutions for the new year.  After making three resolutions last year and only meeting one I’ve decided to do things differently.  I am  going to have goals they just won’t necessarily be year-long ones.  Also I will be more specific about my goals and my plan to achieve them.  One goal to lose weight and I have a specific plan to achieve that but I haven’t decided on any other goals yet.

Instead of writing about what I’m going to do here and then not doing it I am going to do stuff and then write about it.  That seems like a better model: more doing stuff, less talking about doing stuff.

My next post about goals will be after I have met one or tried and failed.

November 2009 Goal Review

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I didn’t do very well on my goals this month.

My first goal is to increase my passive income. I made some progress on this. I purchased an established website which should provide a nice boost to my online income. The purchase and transfer of the site should be finished by the end of the month and I’ll provide more details when the purchase is finished.

My second goal is to lose weight. No progress was made on this goal. It is now obvious that I am going to lose the $500 weight loss challenge. Tomorrow’s post will discuss how I will pay the $500.

My third goal is to increase the number of RSS subscribers to 500. No progress was made on this goal as my number of subscribers leveled off this month. With a big push in December I might still be able to meet this goal.

One out of three is not a very good result. It will soon be time to set new goals for next year. I need to come up with better plans for meeting my goals next year.

September 2009 Goal Review

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It is the end of the month and time for my monthly goal review.

My first goal is to increase my passive income. I didn’t do anything towards that goal this month. I will do something towards this goal in October.

My second goal is to lose weight. I made decent progress on that goal this month. My weight went from 221 to 210.8. I was wanting to get it to under 210 so I would have less than 10 pounds a month to lose for the rest of the year. This was a pretty good result though. I knew I would easily lose weight while in Central America. Now that I am back home I have to make sure I continue the weight loss.

My third goal is to increase the number of RSS subscribers to 500. I made a little progress on this goal with a high of 452 subscribers compared to a high of 448 last month. This was despite not posting often and having mostly short posts. If I manage to start writing better posts I should be able to get the subscriber count up to 500.

I once again made progress on two out of three of my goals. I have been neglecting my passive income lately so I will make it a priority this month. There won’t be any excuse for not making all three goals in October.

August 2009 Goal Review

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It is the end of the month and time once again for my monthly goal review.

My first goal is to increase my passive income. I didn’t do anything substantial toward this goal this month. I did reinvest some dividends but I need to do a lot more than that if I want to make a noticeable increase in my passive income. Passive Family Income’s eHow 100 Article Challenge has produced some good results for him and I’m thinking of making a similar challenge for myself in September.

My second goal is to lose weight. I made progress on this goal since my weight dropped from 225 to 221. I’m not happy with this result though because my weight was down to 215 at one point this month. My goal is to weigh 180 pounds by the end of the year. This means I need to lose 10 1/4 a month for the next four months. In the past I’ve lost 10 pounds a month in Guatemala without trying. I’m hoping that is still the case. Once I return from Guatemala though I will have all the Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts to contend with. It would probably be best to lose all the weight while I’m in Guatemala. At the end of next month I’ll know whether that is a reasonable goal.

My third goal is to increase the number of RSS subscribers to this blog to 500. I had a high of 448 subscribers this month up from 430 the month before. I’m making steady progress toward this goal but I need to increase my rate of progress if I’m going to reach my goal by the end of the year.

I made progress on two out of three goals this month. That is what I expected before this month started. Since I came back early from my hiking trip though I should have made some progress on the passive income goal as well. In September I should hit all three goals.

July 2009 Goal Review

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It is the end of the month and time once again for my monthly goal review.

My first goal is to increase my passive income. I made slight progress on this. I purchased another dividend paying stock. I’d still like to buy a rental property if I can find a good deal. Since I’ll be hiking most of August I’m unlikely to do anything towards this goal for the month.

My second goal is to lose 30 pounds. I went backwards on this one. My weight has now gone up to 225 pounds which is the most I have ever weighed. I’m hoping to lose a lot of this weight on the hike but having all this extra weight will make hiking a lot harder. At the end of August I should have some good progress on this goal.

My last goal was to increase my RSS subscriber count to 500. I made progress on that goal this month. I hit a high of 430 subscribers during the month and I am now consistently over 400. This is without doing anything special to promote this site. Hitting 500 subscribers still seems like a reasonable goal and I will do some promotion later this year to help reach that number.

I met two out of my three goals this month. For August the only goal I really want to make progress on is losing weight. If I manage to lose a significant amount of weight and just maintain on my other goals I will consider that a successful month.