Another busy week has flown by and lo! how fortuitous that it lands upon the Groundhog Day Review, which I have not done in a while.
This was a short week, as Monday was my only real day off with the Lovely Bride, and then we took the whole weekend off to spend with Family.
I have to say, though, that the days that I worked were super-productive. I nearly filled my DAL pages each day with actions completed and I feel very good about that!
On Friday I finally got to go ahead and set aside some time for creative work, as with Saturday morning before we headed out to the island (yes, as you are reading this I am relaxing and enjoying some time away).
The projects and tasks for September are not quite as aggressive as they were for August. I needed to get back on track after my little bout with depression and changing up my whole routine. This is how we did for August/Period 8:
Successes
I was able to successfully save 10% of the revenue from my little business venture and sock it away safely.
I published and launched Work. Smarter! Volume Two. You should go buy it.
I wrote a grand total of 17 Weekly posts on four channels and a few other shared items on the ICMM blog. And I managed to keep up with the End of Day Review Notes for two weeks. These have been particularly helpful in keeping myself organized and not setting myself up to do too much, then failing to get it done.
Incompletes
I did not manage to sign up as many new members for August as I wanted, but the upstream pipeline is much larger than it was at the beginning of the month. I thought it would be easier. Part of this was due to the fact that I had neglected to consider the Labor Day Weekend in my plans and basically lost a full week of being able to make sales calls.
I only spent about two hours working on the novel. I am going to re-visit the entire concept next week.I am written into a corner and need to create some way of getting out.
I need to get better at scheduling and keeping my Artist’s Dates, I only had one in August. There are a LOT of models to be painted…
Overall
This review period was very strong on Creation, if not on Creativity. While Operations has begun to ramp up, it is not where it should be. As a pro-active measure I started a new, clean CRM account with HighRiseHQ, to track my sales calls and client contacts. I had been doing this via paper and folders but as they became more numerous I decided I should get back in the saddle with an automated system. I haven’t used one, or needed one, for a long time, but if my plan to add ten new members to the NHTC project every month, for each community served, I am going to need one and when I do there will not be enough time to go back and add in all of the relevant information.
I am learning to manage my new, non-smoking, workflow and that a short nap in the middle of the day gives me the ability to finish the day strong.
I have been using the Action Planners from Charlie Gilkey, but I am finding the Daily Planner is just not adequate to my needs, it needs to be bigger and more flexible. So for now I am going back to the Next Action Cards.
I am really looking forward to kicking it in September. As you may recall I posted my SMART goal planning a while back, and here is what is ahead for Period 9:
- Revisit the concept behind the novel, and give the damned thing a title
- 10% of all revenue to savings
- 10 new members for NHTC
- create new community for NHTC site
- Weekly Writing projects: 16 posts on 4 channels
- Do some serious creative work on the model soldiers
- Lose six more pounds (the goal is to hit 200 by 17.10, 213 on 07.09!)