Review week 02-2008; Goals, blog and GTD

On Sundays I’m looking back on the past week. How did I perform towards my goals? How did my blog do? And how am I keeping up with my Getting Things Done system and Zen to Done habits?

Blog performance

I finally finished my post on comparing the different paper planner systems. It turned out to be a lot more work than I expected, but I’m pretty satisfied with the results. Traffic to the post has been good and some other blogs linked to it (thanks for that!), which lead to a rise in subscriptions (welcome!). Unfortunately it hasn’t been submitted to Digg yet (if someone feels like doing that I would be grateful) and although it has been submitted to StumbleUpon and received some thumbs up already, there is no (like zero) traffic coming from StumbleUpon to that post. Which is rather odd, we’ll see how that develops in the next week.

Subscriber numbers have broken the 600 barrier for the first time on Friday. This week’s average has a nice increase, both for subscribers as for visitors. I lost a Technorati point, but I suspect that their calculations are lagging behind (that happens a lot over there), because there are a handful of new incoming links from blogs that haven’t linked before.

I won the interview yourself contest at Shane and Peter’s blog with the best question (you had to make one up yourself). Curious to see what it is? Check the interview and leave your answer in the comments if you feel like it.

Today I’m going to add and update some pages on the blog, the About page needs an update. I’ve started using Twitter a lot more since a week or two (click to follow me), so I’m going to add it to the Contact page and the contact form needs to go live again too. And I have more on the list, I’ll see how far I get before it’s time to get back to renovating the house.

Statistics week 02-2008
Average RSS subscribers:	578	+28
Average daily visitors:	170	+38
Technorati Authority:	263	-1

Fun fact: I started blogging at work too. I’m going to use it as an interactive way of communicating about project progress for the IT project I’m managing. Curious to find out how that’s going to work out.

Progress towards goals

The single goal approach is starting to pay off. Progress on the renovation project is very solid for two straight weeks. There’s still a lot of work to do, both outsourced work and work I have to do myself but there are jobs on the list that get checked ”Done”. And that’s very satisfying.

Rising early has become more of a habit again too, and those morning hours are mainly for blogging. So although that goal has dropped in priority (see last week’s review) it still gets considerable attention.

I also planned to do more running in the mornings, but the darkness, the cold and the rain are holding me back (yeah, I’m wimping out, I know). I think running is a lot nicer when the temperatures are higher and when there’s no rain.

Material State
2nd floor renovated by 02-2007	Progress on this goal is still strong. Again three full days (including today) of solid work.
Active State
2500 subscribers by 12-2007	Overdue! 23% done.
Social State
Be in contact with friends and family 4 days a week	Yes. 3 out of 10 weeks
Emotional State
No goal at this time
Physical State
Run half a marathon in 10-2008	No progress (again).

Zen to Done / Getting Things Done - weekly review

Well the post on the paper based systems has been completed and published. Since the start of this year I’m using my Moleskine Planner as my ZTD/GTD simple system. So far it’s working out great, appointments on the left side of the planner and MIT’s on the right side. The right side is also for new actions.

In a week or two, I’ll be re-reading Getting Things Done, especially the part about weekly reviews. The habit of weekly reviews is pretty solid, as you can see on the blog. I hardly missed one for the past 5 months. But I know that there’s room for improvement as far as GTD is concerned.