SUMMARY: A quick recap of the past month’s Groundhog Day Resolutions progress.

Last month on the 10/10 GHD Review Day, I was beset with angsty thoughts about my own limits, and it took a few days to find some workable strategies for getting by them.

STRATEGY ONE: Remember what principles are important, and live them through action. STRATEGY TWO: Be involved in making fun ‘n important stuff with your friends. STRATEGY THREE: Pick the harder path. Resistance equals growth. STRATEGY FOUR: Commit to 5 minutes of pain when facing a new challenge, then take a nap.

Since then, I’ve been feeling pretty good. The minutes of pain thing was a pretty important breakthrough. Also, from the Google Wave with Colleen theme of CALM, I’ve been actively trying to be calm about day-to-day events, instead of mentally ticking off all the things that could go wrong. As a result I’m more relaxed, and I think I’m finally starting to get what do not hurry, do not wait is supposed to feel like. It “only” took 46 weeks, from the beginning of the Google Wave experiment (which was launched on this premise) to now.

So with less than two months left in the year, how have my plans unfolded? I’d listed my goals on Groundhog Day as follows:

• Create a package for each of the five destinations for website (the five destinations were niche design, info product, software, community, and sounding board)
• Recruit people to be part of what I’m doing
• Expand product line from 1 to 5 products
• Offer it all (and more) on the website

I haven’t shipped anything new in any of these areas, though I can say there has been progress made in the following areas:

• Design business: made the design website, tried several variations of web development / design for small business owners. Some good insights came out of that, as well as a heightened competency in general CSS and PHP programming, if not a sustainable business.
• On the information product side of things, I did get to talk to people like fellow New Hampshire resident Stephen P Smith, which helped put things into motion. I also have just gotten more used to thinking in terms of product and market, and have a bunch of half-developed works.
• Community-wise, I’ve been involved with more local entrepreneurs that I get along with and am inspired by. Jellies, podcasts, entrepreneurial meetings, trading design tips…it’s all helped create the basis for something important moving forward. I’m not sure what that is, but it’s taken a lot of time.
• I moved the website back to WordPress this year too, which was not a trivial task. There’s much to be done still.

All year, the hangup has been starting the new projects so I could ship something, and when I review the previous months of Groundhog Day Resolution Review Days I see a lot of thrashing around trying to get to the root of the blockage. I think this month, the big breakthrough on that is to find something that beats procrastinations ability to reward myself right now: the notion that acting in accordance with deeply-held principles pays off immediately. Picking the harder path, shaking off the pain of being bad at something when doing it for the first time, and claiming the tiniest fraction of knowledge is difficult work. It’s the kind of work ethic I respect. If I think of the projects I set before myself in that way, knowing what to do seems much more relaxed.

The goal for the rest of the year? Ship more things. That means focusing on the following half-finished initiatives:

• Digital Download of Concrete Goals Tracker source code (working on documentation)
• Handgun Safety Poster
• Simple 4-color Task Pads
• Revised Design Services Website

I’ll leave it at that for now. The next review date is 12/12/2010.

Past Episodes of Groundhog Day Resolutions

• Kickoff!
• March 3
• April 4
• May 5
• June 6 – No Post!
• July 7
• August 8 – No Post!
• September 9
• October 10