Taking Responsibility

Part 3

Working from the point of view that I am in charge and create my own life - what sort of a life do I want to create?

It's crunch time for me. I can't ignore the fact that I need to take charge of parts of my life where previously I have allowed myself to coast along unconsciously while I focus on other areas such as my day job (teaching).

If I really am to take responsibility for my life and its results, I need to step up and intervene in at least some areas of my life (to begin with) in order to become a more conscious and enlightened being. :-)

Aims

I tend to operate with vague aims in mind all of the time. I realise that if I want to steer my life towards the outcomes I think I desire, then I have to play a more active part in making these outcomes happen. They aren't going to happen by accident most of the time. I have to do something.

I need to get clear about what my aims are though.

I think my aims are to be found in general categories like Health, Wealth, Writing, Giving, and Business.

Health covers things like what I eat and drink; how much I weigh and my body type and shape; and my exercise in terms of training to support my health and also training to achieve exercise milestones for their own sake e.g. 100 mile bicycle sportives and 10km running races.

Wealth covers things such as eliminating my personal debts and increasing my personal savings by managing my consumption and spending habits.

Fiction Writing covers how many words I am writing each day; editing, and publishing.

Business Writing covers how many words I am writing, editing and publishing each day for my business publications (teaching and training).

Giving covers what I am doing to make the world around me a better place for the people I love. I might think I'm a nice guy and tracking the effectiveness of me giving to others will help me to see how I might be making a difference. This includes spending time on close family, obviously. I mustn't lose sight of them being my #1 priority.

Business covers my publishing and training business; and also the actions I need to take in order to make business activities effective in my life. So this will include product creation, product marketing and promotion, and customer engagement.

Goals

I have realised that I will never know how I am doing in relation to my aims in life unless I actually set some measurable goals or targets to aim for. It helps to be specific with these too. I could, for example, set myself the goal of saving more money. But then when I have saved ten pence, I have met my goal, right? Because ten pence is 'more money'. So I need to be specific with my goals. To finish that example, I could set myself the goal of saving £1000 in a specific bank account. That would reduce the likelihood of me mistaking when I have achieved it. If it was spread out over several accounts, with money coming in and going out all of the time, it would be really hard to know with any certainty that I had achieved my goal. So a separate bank account, just for saving money. That way, nothing goes out until I consciously will it.

As far as Steem is concerned, I am aiming for a goal of 1000 followers, 1000 posts, 60 Reputation and 500 Steempower. That's a pretty good stretch for me to aim for in the first stages of my Steem existence.

As far as Health goes, I am aiming at being 14 stones (196lbs) again and a 34 inch waist. I'm currently 18 stones (252lbs) and hovering just under a 40 inch waist. Eventual exercise targets include being able to run 10km and cycle 100 miles, but my interim targets are going to be to run 5km and cycle 50 miles.

My money targets are to pay off £1000 of debt and save £1000 for new computer components (upgrading to stay on top of video production).

Fiction writing targets are to write 50000 words per month eventually, but that will be once I no longer have to work the day job and so much unpaid overtime. So for now the target will be to write 500 words per day, which clocks in a respectable 15000 words per month.

Business writing targets are to write one page of PLR product per day. This is after the necessary research etc. One page runs to around 500 words so that will be my business writing goal too - to write 500 words of product per day.

Giving targets are going to be interesting to quantify, but if I start with something like 20 minutes per day of uninterrupted focus time with Frankie that would be good. I spend a lot of time doing things with him but in fits and starts. I want to see what difference it makes to both of us if we spend longer chunks of time together doing specific things/projects. With Judy that's a bit different again I think: she seems to prefer me to complete jobs for her primarily! Maybe my goal with Judy can be to spend 20 uninterrupted minutes with her just talking. We'll try that and see how it goes.

Business activity goals are going to be interesting to quantify too. While I am working the day job still, I doubt that I can carve out much time for business each day. I'm going to start with allocating one hour to my business each day. 20 minutes for product creation tasks; 20 minutes for marketing and promotion tasks; and 20 minutes for list building and customer engagement tasks.

So that is going to create a lot of pressure for my time, which I want and welcome, because I want to reduce the amount of wasted time I suspect that I currently have. By making myself accountable through posting daily on Steemit, I will get a much better feel for how much I can actually achieve in a day once I have my survival and daily obstacles handled. We'll see how it goes - I am quite prepared to adjust my goals and drop some if I have bitten off too much and end up choking my schedule.

Metrics

One of the things that I have realised is how I need to keep tracking my metrics if I want to understand more about what works and what doesn't work.

One of the best ways that I can think of is that in conjunction with a daily accountability post, I include the latest stats about the various things that I want to achieve. This can be either as text, or perhaps for more visual appeal and engagement, graphics. Text would be easiest of course, but graphics are possible providing that I can make the process fast and easy. Luckily I picked up a GetStencil account on an AppSumo special a while ago, and this turns out to be a lot faster to get good graphics turned around than say, using Photoshop. I'm not bad with Photoshop, and if I used it heavily I am sure that I would get better at it. But for now I'm going to use GetStencil and resort to Photoshop only when I need something that I can't get elsewhere.

So you've seen my little ruler/divider that I made? Here it is again - it is based on my business logo for Powerful Wonders:

The Daily

The Daily is going to be my second post on Steemit most days. I guess there will be times when it might be my third, but most days I only see myself writing one post in one of my series, or a one-off post. The other will be my accountability post in The Daily.

The format of The Daily will see the title being the numerical date e.g. "20180317 The Daily". So that's Year/Month/Day/TheDaily, which automatically sorts the posts in a slowly rising numerical sequence. This is how I will store them as I write them, so it will help me admin the process behind the scenes. And it will feel better to me than 'Part 120' and 'Part 121' etc. More meaningful to use actual real world dates.

So what am I going to track in my daily accountability blog The Daily?

• Exercise and Weight. I am curious to see how these two will relate on a daily basis. At the end of each day I'm just going to log my steps, my intense excercise type and length and result, and my weight from the first thing in the morning.
• Water. I am going to set myself a goal of drinking a certain amount each day based on my current bodyweight, because water is an essential part of health and also fat burning in exercise.
• Food. I am going to track my food intake values to firstly find out what on earth I am eating, and secondly to steer my diet with more deliberate purpose than 'I'm hungry! What's good to eat?!?' I am initially interested in bringing my food intake under control so that it is congruent with my health and weight goals. Eventually, I would like to use my food goals as a way of engaging with more preparation of food from scratch.
• Wealth. I am going to track my paying off of personal debts; my paying into personal savings; and gradually the increasing effects of my business activities on my personal finances. I am aware that overall while I still have any outstanding personal debts it always makes more sense to pay off debt instead of pay into savings, but I will mainly be tracking saving up money for certain purchasing goals and also putting money aside to cover eventualities such as major item replacement/maintenance.
• Business wealth. I am going to keep track of how my business activities are generating income both for the business and then also for me as I eventually am able to pay myself from it.
• Business activities. I am going to track time spent / activities completed in my business.
• Writing. For both creative writing and business writing I will track wordcount, editing, and publication. Eventually, I will include sales data too :-)

So if I am going to do this in graphical format, things will look a bit like this:

Green will signify that I have reached/surpassed that goal/target.
Red will signify a target that I have set myself but am still working towards and have not reached yet.

That works quite nicely for my Steemit goals. Once I have hit those goals, I'll draw up a new set of goals so that I keep striving to push up my standards. I'm also toying with the idea that I will run my daily accountability posts in 'Seasons' so that I work hard for the duration of a season and then have a week of downtime. I think that building in rests and a change in schedule will be good for me.

Below that in each of The Daily posts I'd then have my Health goals in a graphic, and my Wealth, Writing, Giving and business goals in their own graphics. Those ones might look a bit like this:

But I will be finalising what I want to track and finishing those graphics as I go. I can get started with what I have right there.

Thanks

I'd like to thank a couple of superlative Steemians for pushing me to better myself / showing me the way / blazing the trail so I knew which way to go and how.

First up, @hopehuggs for brilliant inspiration, and massive practical advice and assistance in all of her posts. Her step by step guides to the things she posts about are second to none.
Secondly, @valorforfreedom for his fantastic 'how to' guides in SteemSchool which I have used to create my header graphic from a photo I took out in the forest near my home; and also to create my divider/ruler graphic which is based on my 'Powerful Wonders' business logo.
Thirdly, @angelacs for her prolific blogging, her epic comments, and her thoughtful generosity. Her challenges have really spurred me on to greater things than I thought I'd aim for, and her support has been invaluable.

To all of you I give a huge heartfelt heart:

All graphics: Copyright Paul Williams 2018 except Steemit logo render which is used courtesy of @ocm.