Review week 16-2008; Goals, blog and productivity habits

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 productivity habits?

Blog performance

I hope you enjoyed the post about passwords. I had that post in draft for a while before I decided to finally finish it and publish it. I have more posts like that…draft status, needing more time to really finish them. This week I probably won’t be publishing a lot too, because the renovation project (see next section) needs a lot of attention this week also.

Here are the stats: subscribers up, the rest stable.

Progress towards goals

Renovation project
This week I worked on four five days (today too) on the renovation project. Not full days, because I have a day job too. But all in all, I think I managed to get 24 hours of work done after today.

Next week I have to put in some hours too, because the project needs to be ready for the plasterer. He starts on Thursday. When he’s done the progress will look enormous (the walls look horrendous right now). Can’t wait to see that! Hopefully I can post a picture of that result next week.

Blog goal
I will be changing the blogging goal coming week. Some of you have suggested me to drop it (or let it go), because it doesn’t really serve a purpose. It’s been on my mind for a while now, and last week I read about the 8 addictive habits of bloggers at Daily Blog Tips. Number 1: Obsessing over subscribers. In it Daniel Scocco points out that subscriber numbers, although important are not the sole measuring stick for blog success.

Marathon goal
One of my co-workers asked whether I ran this week (Thanks Wilfred!). Now that was an unexpected turn of support and accountability, what I blog about permeates into daily life through different channels. The answer unfortunately still was: No. But I will run at least once next week.

I also noticed that Brett Legree started to train for the marathon, along with some other people I semi-regularly talk with on twitter. He has funny shoes Do check his blog, it’s called 6 weeks and has a very Fight Club look and feel to it, intentionally.

Material State
2nd floor renovated by 02-2007	Overdue! Good progress, I’m proud of myself
Active State
2500 subscribers by 12-2007	Overdue! Up a notch to 37%
Social State
Be in contact with friends and family 4 days a week	ACCOMPLISHED
Emotional State
No goal at this time
Physical State
Run half a marathon in 10-2008	No progress, I’ll do better next week.

Productivity Habits - weekly review

I was thinking I might be needing to rename this section to Simplifying habits. I’ve been deliberately working on finishing projects (amongst the ones you know, there are some websites I promised to make, a video I still need to finish editing, tons of small chores of unfinished projects in the house), preventing myself (and others) from loading new ones onto me (that’s an ongoing challenge) and eliminating and cancelling stuff that was not helping me go forward in any way (subscriptions and the likes).

I like it when I can cross the time consumers from the list. I love it even more when the list shortens, and it does at the moment. The moment that I’m mainly working on projects and activities, that are aligned to my goals is getting nearer. And when I’m there, I need to shift focus and get busy to really propel me forward.