I’ve used an abbreviated, modified version of a bullet journals for several years. It’s helped immensely. In part, it’s a single page, day diary, but I tend to eschew verbiage and use quick sketches, notations, and doodles. I make sure, in one of several locations, that I mark a single day/date and I ensure that I get something down. Been at this a while, and here’s what seems to be working.
Typical Goal Setting
Shakespeare’s Hermione:
“But once before I spoke to th’ purpose? When?”
in The Winter’s Tale (I.ii.100)
Typical Goal Setting
At front of each notebook? Four, easy questions with blank bullet points.
- Day
- Weeks
- Months
- Years
So the way it works? During one day, the goal, everyday the goal is a simple 1,000 words, written. Can be weblog, horoscopes, manuscript, or whatever else I’m working on, but the four, typed manuscript-style pages, or roughly 1,000 words? That’s a daily goal. If I have to work at either shop, or I’m traveling, family business, or other interruptions? Doesn’t matter. That means, it doesn’t matter, either way. Either I hit that goal, roughly half of a weekly horoscope, or I don’t, and if I don’t, there’s no shame.
Not like I’m being graded on this.
Looking ahead, right now, I’m trying to get all of the March horoscopes spooled up before Mercury is officially retrograde — just get them finished. Quote, planets, actions, reactions. Just get it out and I’ll worry about proofreading, copyediting later.
That’s the daily goal. That daily goal rolls into weeks, possibly the three-month version, seasonal, at its best?
Typical Goal Setting
The goal-setting process yields results for me because the goals are amorphous enough that I can easily hit them. There are kind of specific, but this is a rhythm I worked out over years, and serves me well. Understand, too, that the primary goal, four (4) typed manuscript pages, roughly a 1,000 words, is merely a target. Some days, conditions and current events being what they are? I’m lucky if I can finish a single sign’s horoscope.
The struggle is real.
As the old aphorism goes?
“The only easy day was yesterday.”
True. But there is the drive that pushes me forward, an insistent inner urge to chisel out meaning from the thin digital air.
“A lot of work goes into making this look easy.”
Always my favorite closer.
Typical Goal Setting
The original Five (5) Year plan was to sunset astrofish.net in 2028. Not really retire, but stick to the parts of this that I enjoy the most, writing the horoscopes and trying wrestle meaning to the page.
Changing that to a Four (4) Year plan is a little different, as I managed to squeeze all the material into one place and into a singular form. That much I like. But to actually sunset the domain name itself? I’m less sure.
The URL will be thirty (30) years old in 2028. I’m unsure of what direction I will take, then. It’s that question mark at the end of the goals.
Wait and see, but rest assured, I’m not going anywhere that I can’t be found.
Typical Goal Setting
More than one client has expressed shock, regret, and outright denial at the notion that I might retire.
Fear not!
I’m not retiring, just adjusting my pace to make it better for me.
