Back at the beginning of the year I made a list on my blog of many plans and goals for 2010. The list wasn’t very well thought out, I just wrote it as I went, putting down things I wanted to accomplish in various areas.
When I later counted them up, the total number of plans and goals randomly came to 50. After a while I started tracking these in a spreadsheet, and at the end of every month I would tick off what I had accomplished (Win), what I was working on (In The Works), what I intended to get to in the future (Future Win), and where I had failed (Fail).
This would be very helpful, except that every win or fail was worth an equal number of points in this spreadsheet. For example, I decided to write an album’s worth of songs for the year, and this was worth one point, and at the same time I wanted to check if my iPhone could record audio as a dictaphone to use in podcasts, and this was also worth one point.
Going to four conventions? One point.
Playing a computer game? One point.
Writing a novel? One point.
Buying a new camera bag? One point.
Also, for some reason, I listed doing more juggling podcasts under both the juggling and podcasting sections of my stated goals.
So here are the results.
At the beginning of the year there were, of course, 50 things in the “future win” column and the other columns were empty. By the end of the year:
Fail: 12.45
Future win: 0
In the works: 2.5
Win: 35.05
Not bad, I think.
In fact, I don’t know if this is good or bad, because I’ve never tracked personal projects quite so specifically before.
And, to be very clear about this, I did way more than I outlined on this list. Some of the most interesting things I did this year, and some of my biggest accomplishments, I didn’t foresee in January. How could I? I might write a whole other blog post about the things I’ve learnt in 2010, and how I’ve developed as a person, as they feel more important than ticking boxes on a hastily and shoddily compiled a list.
Anyway, I’m going to take address these plans and goals for 2010 in a series of individual blog posts over the coming week. I’m mostly writing these blog posts for me, to help me keep track of what I’ve accomplished. If you haven’t noticed, that’s one of the main functions of this blog; to help me keep a centralized record that is easily searchable and browsable.