To provide the context for the review of last week, let me restate my STRATEGIC GOALS FOR 2019 as follows:

• [DISCIPLINED GOAL] Increase my mastery of Javascript Development
• [DISCIPLINED GOAL] Increase the viability of my Online Stationery Business
• [EMERGENT GOAL] Increase my expression of “me”
• [EMERGENT GOAL]Take care of myself and the communities that matter to me

Disciplined goals (the top two) are what I consider HARD, and are explicitly part of my Groundhog Day Resolutions push. The emergent goals “just happen” without me having to think about them because I am magical that way, and are NOT officially part of my Groundhog Day Resolutions task lists.

It was only last week that I realized there were two ways to handle the HARD DISCIPLINED goals, and that I had to take this into account:

1. Make regular progress on CURRENT initiatives that are GHDR-relevant! This is the ongoing daily work for billables and immediate responsibilities to keep the machinery running.
2. Make FUTURE opportunities by creating new packages! This is the future projects that bring opportunities, revenue by producing new assets.

Most of the time I’ll be working on maintaining longer-term projects and not the shiny new stuff in (2). Getting OK with that was a major insight. Also, I decided NOT TO WORRY about a lot of things and not be so hard on myself. The culmination of the Ralph Baer Celebration last week also has helped me see that being an active contributor in a creative community is legitimate work, and I no longer have to feel like I’m not spending the bulk of my time doing “real work”. I AM DOING A LOT OF WORK, though not everyone will think it as such. But as far as MY PERSONAL MISSION AND CALLING goes, I think I’m doing it.

But I’m jumping ahead…let’s get to evaluating the week! (more…)

Hey everyone! I just got the first Groundhog Day Resolutions (aka GHDR) MONTHLY REVIEW out last week, so it’s time for the first WEEKLY REVIEW to make sure I’m staying on top of things. My memory is pretty terrible and if I don’t review every week, it is less likely that I’ll maintain momentum.

If you’re just tuning in, this is the year that I’m trying to establish a more driven approach to goal fulfillment. I’ve already figured out how to be productive by harnessing my natural inclination to explore, learn, build, and share, but doing hard and boring things continues to elude me. I’ve had some interesting insights this month:

• The opening of a Ralph Baer Day exhibit (above photo) was a fast-moving and great collaborative experience with friends I have known for many years. Maybe I don’t need to go it alone, if I’m able to just ask people to join me, as I joined them when they asked me.
• There are two levels of GHDR “hard” goals, not one. I will need to figure out how to manage them.

Let’s get into it!

(more…)

Time for another weekly review for Sunday, February 24th! I STILL haven’t written the process post to finish my troika of Groundhog Day Resolutions kickstarts. However, I’ve been able to cruise off of last year’s process; the process post is intended to be a resource for GHDR devotees who might want to compare notes. I’m not going to worry about it too much, but it IS very much something I want to get out of the way.

Currently, I am most concerned about billing enough hours before my yearly family trip to Taiwan to visit my 90yr-old dad. He seems to be looking forward to the trip, as am I, but there’s a level of stress related to finances which I have to take care of before I go. It’s quite a long visit, so it’s up to six weeks of zero income on top of the travel-related expenses. That said, it’s more important to reconnect with family–and maybe get out of my own head for a bit.

For this week’s review I’m going to try to slam through it as quickly as possible by keeping detail at a higher level than I am wont to do. I’ll also mix in a small amount of personal non-goal stuff in the report for a bit of personal color. For example, I got a new hat at Goorin Brothers (above picture) in Harvard Square! More on that later! (more…)

The process post for this year’s Groundhog Day Resolutions is taking a lot longer to put together, so I’m going to jump in with the first weekly report for February. Since I haven’t formalized this year’s changes to the format, I’ll just use last years so I can keep moving. I’ve been maintaining the habit of noting my weekly/daily planning in the virtual coworking chatroom, so I can reconstruct my recent history of work.

As I mentioned in the GHDR Kickoff Part II Goal Setting post, there are two over-arching goals this year: Software Development Mastery and Better ECommerce. These are the two “main slots” that my limited attention span can manage, and they deal specifically with hard path to creating future benefits. Everything else—self care, fun projects, etc—are in the “aux slot” and is everything OUTSIDE of the other two goals. Keep in mind that ultimately all activity, whether it’s main slot or aux slot, will feedback into my sense of well being. So goes my theory, anyway!

In the diagram above, the GHDR HARD PATH in yellow corresponds with the two main slots I spoke of. Everything else is the auxiliary slot: happy, curious, unplanned. For this year’s GHDRs I’m trying to concentrate my very limited ability to focus into GHDR, and just let everything else happen.

So with that brief introduction out of the way, let me start with the Weekly Review Summary:

• Impressions – Last week was a mix of tasks that didn’t seem to get done. I had planned to finish GHDR Kickoff Part III last week, but this got supplanted by preparing for paying project work, issues related to the Amazon store (such as redesigning and restocking the ETP StickyPads), and other stuff that just popped up. In hindsight, it was a week of RAMPING UP and I didn’t enjoy the definitive feel of having finished something until Sunday evening, when I finished the Ralph Baer Day PONG tribute game I’ve been working on.
• Winning – Finished the PONG tribute game
• Stuck – Very slow progress on MEME, GHDR Part III.

In the next session I’ll get into the details.

(more…)