How are you going to make 2022 better 2021 — Follow These five steps.
This is the time of year when we reflect and redirect where we want to go in the new year. How about you? Are you satisfied with last year? For me 2021 seems a blur of conflicting things all wanting all my time. My priority system failed. I bounced from one area to another. Luckily, I had a system to track my tasks that mostly worked. This year my goals will be clearer and limited in number.
My primary goal is to begin and improve my freelance writing career while continuing my blog, medium essay, and newsletter each week. Stated more simply I will write 500–1000 words a day. This will be my top priority without fail! Doesn’t that sound like an equation for failure.
I think I can pull this off with some small tweaks in my remaining systems. This also means I have to remember to say no as new things arise. I haven’t done very well at this in the last few weeks. But a wall banner with my three goals and “just say no” may help.
My second goal will be to continue to fill a leadership role in my Rotary Club and District. This helps me maintain coherence with my purpose, “to help others.”
My third goal for the first half of the year is related to moving into a smaller apartment and travel. I two or three rotary short trips out-of-town, a graduation in Kansas, and am still waiting for New Zealand to start letting people in so I can go visit my daughter.
How do I make this happen — Five Steps?
- Build some habits to make housework, cooking and daily living more routine. Habits are those things you do repeatedly so you don’t have to plan for them.
a. Wash dishes on Monday and Thursday before I go to bed.
b. Laundry on Wednesday.
c. Get up at 8:00 a.m.
d. Go to the store and cook on Thursday. Freeze leftovers.
2.Write first thing daily. About 30 minutes after I get up and get going I will start writing. This will get the number one priority out of the way early each day then I can work on other things.
a. Develop sequences of blogs and medium articles.
b. Outline and start writing an ebook on the basics of money, finance, investments and retirement.
c. Outline an ebook on personal organization and leadership.
d. Identify seasonal topics.
3. Strengthen my system for tracking written and published articles — blog, medium, newsletters, LinkedIn, and client freelance work.
a. Build routines in my Roam app with smart blocks to make my workflows more natural.
b. Become more fluent in roam so I can use it more effectively for writing.
c. Become more effective with phrase.ai for idea expansion and research.
4. Submit at least two requests for work each week until I have about $2,000 per month of freelance work.
a. Look at job boards and submit pitched for the ones that fit.
5. Make the process (system) frictionless and as simple as possible. My systems for writing and tracking what I have written have to become simpler and require less time to implement to support my writing.
