Yes, it’s that time again: Groundhog Day Resolutions Review Day. I almost forgot about it, but fortunately I had entered all the days into Google Calendar and I got the reminder last night.

The quick recap for those unfamiliar with the Groundhog Day Resolutions Concept: Forget January 1st, and set your resolutions on February 2nd. Then follow through and check every month and a day until December 12. This is the first year I’ve tried this, and it’s kind of gratifying to look back and see what progress has been made.

Rather than go into a long-winded explanation of what’s been going on, I’ll just recap each statement; you can read about the original ideas in the original post and various followups (there is an index of posts at the bottom of this article).

1. Make Money from Writing and Making Stuff

The general idea is to shift from pure services and become an original content creator, deriving the bulk of my income from my own work. This ties into a new goal I established this month: to be completely mobile by 2010, so I can go to where the interesting projects and people are in the world. There’s so much world to experience, it drives me nuts. I’ve also been inspired again by Tim Ferriss’ continuing adventures, which you can follow on his mind-bogglingly excellent tip blog.

The “whiffed” (missed) goals I have decided probably weren’t as important as I thought. I still do need to transition to Expression Engine, because my current blog structure feels very constraining, and I think EE’s system will be a welcome improvement.

I actually have been booked for the remainder of the year, and probably a good chunk of next year, so my big challenge will be actually time management. The nature of the projects are steeped in writing (essentially, analysis) and making stuff (software, basically). It’s kind of what I was doing before, but more challenging and therefore interesting. I will be learning a lot that I can proceduralize and redevelop into new things.

2. Build a Sustainable Social Network

It feels like I’ve finally stabilzed a few social structures over the past month, though I am uncertain about my level of commitment to them. This uncertainty arises from the amount of energy that I receive back. I actually feel a little “overdrawn” in terms of my social energy and time, so I need to hole up and regenerate. Also on my mind is the continuing search for suitable partners, in terms both of romance and in working mission. In an ideal world, it would be the same person, but I am not sure how to go about finding this. I may write about some of the challenges I’m facing in the coming months, as I haven’t yet come across a really good explanation of the process.

I do need to get off my ass and resurrect the May goal of creating the co-schemer / freelancer list…this is pretty important to me, and is related to my overall search strategy of being able to connect people. I’d like to be connected too, of course, and I’ve come to believe that all it will take is someone standing up and taking names. I guess that will be me. Watch for a post in the near future.

3. Sell a Product This Year

It’s taken a while, but the Emergent Task Planner Pads have finally gone to press. Related tasks: forming an LLC, figuring out the design-to-fulfillment chain, and starting to think like an actual business entity instead of some guy working out of his basement office in New Hampshire.

This goal relates closely to #1, and there are actually some new deadlines in place. If last year was any indication, the last months of the year are when people start thinking about planning for next year, so having pre-printed versions of the Compact Calendar, perhaps a full-year planner product, and goodness knows what else could be nice product to have. Now that some of the design-to-fulfillment workflow is in place, I can start to automate the process and shorten the cycle. While I was at the printer, it struck me that there’s quite a lot of custom print work I can do beyond pads, and working with a local printer could be a lot of fun. Apparently there is a thing that paper manufacturers create called a paper library, which is a sampler of all the paper stock with printing examples. I was so excited I thought I would faint. This might sound crazy, but I have the ability to touch any material and instantly envision something I could make from it that “respects” it. Putting that into practice would kick ass.

For Next Month

We’re in the home stretch, with only 3 more review periods before the GHD year comes to an end.

• The biggest goal on my mind is shipping those ETP pads and getting feedback from the brave souls who have taken a chance on the product. The second goal is to establish the LLC (I’m thinking of calling it “The David Seah Group”, which scares the crap out of me because I would have to grow into that) and getting the online ordering and fulfillment automated.
• I’m not so concerned about #1, as the printing goal sort of takes care of that.
• Regarding #2, I do need to gather a group of like-minded people with skills, just so we know who we are. I’ve done some of this already privately, but there are so many cool people I’ve been contacted by that I feel the need to organize them into some kind of directory of awesomeness. Everyone has a skill and a story that they can contribute to the pool.
• A bonus goal that wasn’t even on my list was going to the gym…I’ve been going for two months now, and am likely to continue doing so because I have been feeling stronger and—I admit this doesn’t make much sense, but it’s true—breathing more enthusiastically…maybe it’s a result of the improved cardiovascular endurance. The next challenge that isn’t part of my GHDRs is to systematically lose weight.

So that’s it for this month…now, back to work! Time for dreaming will have to come later.

PAST POSTS ON GROUNDHOG DAY RESOLUTIONS AND REVIEW

• Original Post and Rationalization – February 2nd
• GHDRRD #1 – March 3
• GHDRRD #2 – April 4
• GHDRRD #3 – May 5
• GHDRRD #4 – June 6
• GHDRRD #5 – July 7
• GHDRRD #6 – August 8