Hey, welcome to the april review of my Groundhog Day Resolutions, my yearly goal-setting ritual that begins on February 2nd and repeats monthly on 3/3, 4/4, 5/5, and so forth. This month’s review is a bit light on progress because the previous month was consumed by crunch time on a work project that was immediately followed by a trip to Taiwan. It was a good trip, actually, with many personal hurdles overcome as far as language! As for the April review, I’m going to try breaking it down into weekly object/key result (or OKR) posts.

What is an OKR?

The basic premise of OKRs is to have an objective that is numerically measurable. This is quite complementary to my “concrete goals” criteria of “making things that you can show to other people”, so I’m willing to give it a shot. There’s a channel in the coworking discord where people are posting their weekly OKRs, so I’ll get a chance to participate there.

Before I list some OKRs, let me first review my strategic direction for the year. I sometimes call these goals, but they really are not concrete by themselves. Instead I’ve defined four different areas for personal development that I think will elevate my sense of happiness. It occurred to me that these areas could be framed as “elements of happiness” directly, perhaps reframed as emotional desires:

• TO NOT BE BORED, I am pursuing mindblowing productive synergy. This is “is the feeling of excitement that come from being part of a group of people who help each other do wonderful things that they might not have done otherwise”.

• TO NOT BE ISOLATED, I am actively cultivating and currating community. This helps with boredom, and it’s also important for feeding my creative engine. Ideally, we all energize each other, and the group benefits! This idea makes me very happy.

• FOR MONEY TO LIVE, I am growing my stationery side business by expanding the number of products I sell. Currently, the maximum income I can draw from the side business is about one third of what I need to survive. Growing this income to cover my living expenses 100% would be a huge milestone!

• TO FEEL USEFUL, I want to reboot my blog so I can provide more useful content. For the past 10+ years, I’ve been blogging more as an experiment than as a real service to the community; I think I’m just about ready to start sharing what I think it a better-packaged format.

All of these happiness pursuits target (I think) specific areas that will bring me satisfaction while increasing my capacitiy to do things.

OKRs to Review for April 10

I want to choose OKRs for each of the desires. The important thing is to have each action result in a countable result to be considered “successful”. Over time, the continued defining and making of OKRs related to the strategic direction should produce tangible results.

• Find 3 people who are interested in direct collaboration on a project. Make a list of potential projects.
• Find 3 people doing interesting things to talk to. Schedule 1 coffee meetup.
• Write 300 words of script for the Patreon video.
• Make 1 page of links for the Patreon Megadownload
• Write down 3 initial steps for exporting all wordpress posts + comments. The total process will likely take more steps. but this is a start.

See ya in a week!

So that’s the report for the month! I know it’s pretty light, but I’m super tired from traveling and need to turn in. Check in next Monday and see if anything got done!