Middle Of The Year Goal Assessment, Energy and Baggage

June 6th, 2007

WebomaticaPretty interesting post over at J. LeRoy’s Evolving Web has spurred me to do a middle of the year goal assessment.

J. LeRoy talks about two main things, energy and baggage. He mentions having a pretty specific list of goals that he wants to have achieved by 2010. Others look at his list and marvel at his energy and ambition. But he doesn’t see himself as particularly energetic or active.

I have a feeling this disconnect actually helps him achieve things. When I think I have too many things on my plate, I tend to use it as an excuse to procrastinate, whine, and act stressed out, when I should be doing stuff. Maybe I should pretend I have tons of free time and bandwidth?

In terms of baggage, I’m now realize I’m currently mired in a state of endless tweaking. Not finishing things is a form of procrastination. I think I need to recall one of my favorite Steve Jobs quotes: “Real artists ship.” I currently have too many projects and need to polish some of them off so I can get closure. Meanwhile, I waste a fair amount of time working on little piddly stuff that doesn’t really need work in the larger scheme of things.

Anyhow, I thought this would be a good point to review the short list of goals I had for my various web projects and see where I’m at. The strike throughs indicate the ones I’ve achieved as of this date. Notes are in italics.

2007

Webomatica Blog

  1. Crack 50,000 rank at Technorati or 100 blogs linking in.
  2. Figure out a way to get people to give me free stuff to review (music, movies, tech products). (Got 1 coffee mug - unsolicited. Technorati T-Shirt. Two invites to Web 2.0 services. A few PR firms have bugged me. One Free CD. Joined Blogcritics to get stuff to review.)
  3. Maintain my integrity - I won’t “sell out” or diverge from the purpose described on my About page. (so far so good.)
  4. More comics and book reviews. (should do comics in my collection, plus the book reviews from the 1,000 books? Blogcritics should help)
  5. A “recording” project: where my in-progress tracks are uploaded to the blog for people to critique and review. (Help Me Make Music Project… this is a complete failure so far)
  6. Get my old Cine~matica videos online in Flash video format. (converted. now creating the Flash website part.)
  7. Look into Flash video as a method of reviewing websites. (use Camtasia) Don’t feel like doing this any more.
  8. Get through at least the first 50 of the AFI 100 Movies (Totally behind)

Bottle Cap-O-Rama

  1. Get up to 3,000 unique bottle caps. (behind. At 1571 in June)
  2. Fill out all the existing entries with beverage reviews, history on the companies, and links. (behind)
  3. Activate comments site-wide. (done, April)
  4. Add a forum. (Added SMF - design in progress) (have to start over)
  5. Come up with some interactive ways to display the bottle caps: Flash time lines or games. (behind)
  6. Figure out a technology-based system to streamline trading (choices of bottle caps, organization of extra bottle caps, contact information). (can do this through the forum)

Create Mint-O-Rama? mintorama.com Get domain name (Set up Joomla)

Other website related stuff:

  • Create portfolio.
  • Move all the music stuff from the Webomatica blog to a “music” site.
  • Create “mini sites” for albums.

So based on this overall assessment… I’m freaking behind on the majority of them.

I came up with an outline of an action plan, however:

  • Wrap up some of the series writing stuff ASAP: Radiohead, The Prisoner.
  • Stop being distracted by stuff not on the list, namely: traffic watching, playing with new software or websites, and theme tweaking.
  • Some of these items are more time consuming than others. I think I need to prioritize them in order of time involvement, and knock off some of the stuff that won’t take too much time.
  • Some of these items will only be accomplished through regular effort so I need to break them down into more discreete steps.
  • Some of these things aren’t all that important so perhaps can be tabled 2008.

Anyhow, these are just goals for website related stuff. My wife and I also have some more ambitious goals for my “life” that are just too massive to consider, including losing weight, starting a family, purchasing a home, and saving for retirement.

Whew. Now I’m wondering where I’ll get all the energy. Anybody want to lend me some? Or how do you whittle away at your “to do” list?

RSS Feed Please subscribe to the Webomatica RSS Feed!

folder Categories: Blogs, General :: Tags: :: Trackback URL
Back Previous Post: Tech Notes: Apple’s 30th Birthday, A Lifetime of Apple
Back Next Post: Music Notes: Radiohead, Pablo Honey
Back Related Posts: Link Sharing: 7/9/07 :: Bottle Cap-O-Rama Update: 800 Bottle Caps :: Bottle Cap-O-Rama Passes 500 Bottle Caps :: Diving In With Joomla ::

Viewing 5 Comments

close Reblog this comment
Powered by Disqus · Learn more
blog comments powered by Disqus