On Friday I decided to update my Groundhog Day Goal Tracker Form, largely to raise my “big goal” awards from 10 points to 50 points to make them feel more epic. This turned into a four-hour rabbit hole of design revisions!

Here’s a comparison of version 1 (left) with version 2:

There is an archived livestream of the entire design session on YouTube, but here are the highlights of what changed:

• Eliminated the “Pursue a Desirable Result” section, because I never used it. I largely used the form as a reference just to see the “Menu of Goals” and “Goal Related Points” lists. I ended up logging my points in these blog posts you’re reading right now.
• Turned the weekly point tracker from vertical to horizontal. I was finding it hard to use the vertical format.
• Added a space to record total points for the day and the week, which I’d forgotten to do in V1 of the form.

I also made a few small additions/changes:

• The purpose of “Consult Menu of Goals” and “Record Goal Related Points” in V1 was to emphasize a process. In V2, I changed this to Milestone Reward Points and Daily Reward Points to emphasize the difference between big picture and daily activities.
• I assigned LETTERS to the Milestone Reward Goals, so I could write them in on the left side of the tracker area. These would then stand out visually on good days.
• I removed the extra bubbles from the 1 through 5 point zones. I never exceeded 5, and I needed the space to fit the horizontal tracker. Besides, if I needed more than 5 points, the little dots are there for just that reason…just use hash marks!
• I rewrote the copy so everything fit. There’s a new 5-point goal about leaving the house and the column hints at the bottom of the page have all been modified.

Sadly, my color printer is still on the fritz so I can’t even use this form yet. The Patreon supporters have gotten a rough draft version of the blank template PDF to play with, and I’ll post an updated version to this site when I can get to it.

GHDR Lessons Learned and Points Earned

For all the work I’ve done on this form yesterday, it’s not worth a whole lot of points because it doesn’t fit with any of my year’s goals.

13 points. I guess that’s something! I do think the new form looks pretty cool…I really like the 3D effect from the colored lines. Looks exciting!