A New Year for Setting Goals and Taking Action

It's another What’s Up Wednesday. Today, I reveal what I have been doing since the start of the new year – setting goals and taking action. By the way, have a happy and prosperous new year! I’ve been involved with too much mind exercise by over-thinking things out, while allowing other things to pile up. I have determined that this year will be the best one for my online business to date. I have even thought out written goals, and made action plans. Now I know what I must do to make it happen with one problem! I’m spending all this time thinking about it, organizing it, but so far…. NOT putting it into action. And I am already behind with my action plans with just 7 days into the new year.

Isn’t planning and goal setting taking action?

Yes and no! It is important to plan with an end in mind. A number of people fail to do this. But when you don’t execute the plan (another action), then you fail to make progress (my current issue). I don’t make it easy for myself, either. I actually have 3 separate planning sheets. There are action plans for the overall business, for each website, and for niches I want to do this year. Another problem I have is not always putting things down to do in smaller chunks. For example, scheduling – build new site in 2-hours. Even though this is meeting a goal, it is actually a project, not a task. And it really underestimates how much really needs to be done!

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As I’m writing this article, I had to pause so that I could attend a weekly webinar meeting. Interesting is the very topic I'm covering in this article is the very same topic in today’s webinar! I also mentioned how to set goals using the S.M.A.R.T. Goal method that I use – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Results-focused, and Time-limited. However, this is another example of why I don’t get planned scheduled items done for the day. It's because of other things that need done, but end up getting in the way. In this case the webinar was scheduled for an hour. It was still going on past 1.5 hours when I realized the time and lost a half hour.

What to do when bombarded with constant interruptions, loss of focus?

This is an area that can have devastating effects on one’s workday productivity and completion results. Emails, involvement with a number of different social media groups, daily check ups with website operations, unplanned phone calls, people knocking at the door, and so on can easily eat up your day! I have too many email accounts for one thing. Each website has at least 2 (x9 =18) accounts. Plus I have 2 main business email accounts, a personal email account, and junk email account (when wanting a freebie and not a commitment). Talk about a time waster. However, I have already made improvements by checking the 30 shown emails in the account for deletion at a time, then rapidly unchecked the ones that look important as I skim read down the list, and then actually deleting the rest (went through 500 plus emails, reducing them to 27 emails in under 5 minutes using this method) The best way to deal with this issue is to take a look at each interruption that occurs individually, then find a better way to manage it. Obviously, it is best to first look at the ones that either occur all the time (like emails), or eat up half a day when they happen.

Setting the ‘Big Picture’ this year.

Background: I got an email (yes, I know an interruption) that had presented a really crazy idea that I haven’t thought about like this in years. The subject line was titled: “I hate New Year’s Resolutions!”. Maybe you got one? In it, the sender made a statement that resolutions don’t work, then asked a question, “Have you actually kept your resolutions beyond January 31^st ?”. The thing about ‘resolutions’ is that they make us feel like we have accomplished something just because we have “resolved” to do it. But RESOLVING to do something and actually DOING IT are two very different things! So instead of making yet another resolution that you know you won’t keep for very long, is to do this instead… STEP 1: Set a crazy-stupid goal for yourself for this new year… something so big and exciting that it can’t help but get you out of bed each morning. It’s a fact – Most people drastically OVERESTIMATE what they can accomplish in a week, but they drastically UNDERESTIMATE what they can accomplish in a year, so come up with something really big you want to accomplish in this new year and write it down. STEP 2: Make a 12 month plan. Once you’ve established your crazy-stupid goal, break down the actions needed to accomplish that goal into monthly “chunks”. Don’t get overly granular with it. We all know “life happens”, so decide on one or two things you can accomplish by the end of each month and commit to incorporating it into your daily and weekly task list. That’s it, WOW!

So what is the ‘Big Picture’ for your business this year?

The big-crazy goal for my online business this year is to make 50 times more than I did last year – and this past year was my best year since 2010! Not only that, but to also increase my subscribers on one of my sites to 5,000 minimum (10,000 max) this year. Maybe that doesn’t sound like much to you, but then again, it is huge for me (crazy-stupid) huge. Also it will be a big challenge (well worth it). How am I going to do this? Starting in August of last year, I dedicated my main focus to one site. I first had to make a shift with the niche to a newly created site so I would focus on just that niche (beforehand, it was intermingled on another site with multiple topics). You are reading this article on that site right now! Another thing I did, and it wasn’t easy, is to let go of sites that were not produced revenue (not even sales) and some were ‘pet’ projects that I have had for years. That reduced my active site number from 15 to 9! I am currently working on dropping another one while combining 3 more with another related site – lowering it to 5 active sites. I know that popular opinion dictates that the more sites you have, the more money you'd be making. It’s possible, but also more labor intensive if you are not highly efficient about it. Plus I felt that I needed to focus on getting it consistently right with one site, first, before I can get it right with the rest (a real challenge to do with many sites at once). When I can get it to work consistently, I could then transfer what I’ve learned to the next and so on.

Wrapping it up...

With only 5 sites to focus on this year, 4 having specific niches, I would be better equipped to handle the load effectively and profitably. I have broken down what is needed to be done for each site and how best to approach it. What’s really crazy is the MAIN revenue focus will only be on one site! With that commitment, it will also mean my main focus will continue for this site. The other sites will be kept updated and have offers that could potentially make additional revenue (unpredictably), but I have much more control and confidence over this one site. Then if all goes well, I am poised to add a few more evergreen niche sites later on this year. If I only accomplish 10% of what's planned for this year, it'll still be 5 times better than last year… and that’s not bad, either!