Life Is Risky

What is writing at least one post every day for 30 days worth to you?
How about commenting on at least four different blogs every day for 30 days?

This time of year, we see many posts around goals for the coming year whether they are for blogging, weight loss, work, relationships, or just about anything else. What we do not seem to see as often is exactly what reaching that goal will earn. It seems that while people are all about setting goals, they do not really pay that much attention to the reward. Personally the only reason I work to achieve the goal is for the reward, even if the reward is simply knowing that I have accomplished what I set out to do.

So on with the goals!

Goal: Write a post every day for 30 days.

Reward For Achieving: $100 towards a gadget purchase.

Penalty For Not Achieving: $100 deposited into savings.

Reason: Obviously new content is a major motivator for people to read your blog, whether by RSS feed or by actually clicking over to your site. When you commit to writing a post every day regardless of what is going readers see that as a sign you are committed and are interested in improving your blog. After all isn’t that what all this is about? Making your blog and by relationship your self better?

Goal: Comment on at least four different blogs every day for 30 days.

Reward For Achieving: $100 towards a gadget purchase.

Penalty For Not Achieving: $100 deposited into savings.

Reason: You can have the greatest blog out there but if you don’t take the initiative to let others know about it you are wasting your time. Commenting on other blogs not only gets you a few incoming links, but it also shows that you are interested in your fellow bloggers and their success as well. The obvious caveats of not writing spam comments apply.

Goal: Resist the urge to outwardly monetize my blog.

Reward For Achieving: A nice pat on the back.

Penalty For Not Achieving: Kick myself. (I’m a TaeKwonDo blackbelt, my kicks HURT!)

Reason: Ok so this does not really fit the definition of a goal, in that it is not quantifiable but to me it is important nonetheless. Those who read my earlier posts on why I am moving away from monetizing my blog will understand.

Goal: Write a Wordpress plugin by the end of March.

Reward For Achieving: A plugin I can use

Penalty For Not Achieving: $200 into savings. (Money is always a good motivator)

Reason: Writing a plugin to me is a valid blogging goal. Just think of all the posts I can garner from the experience, not to mention the interaction with my readers and anyone who might use the plugin. I doubt I will come up with anything revolutionary but I have a few ideas for things I would like to see that I have not been able to find online.

Goal: Reduce my category count down to 10 by end of January.

Reward For Achieving: Day trip with the better half.

Penalty For Not Achieving: Shopping trip with the better half. (I really hate shopping…)

Reason: I have too many categories. Now that Wordpress has implemented tagging it really makes more sense that many of my categories would be tags, especially those which only have 1 or 2 entries. Anyway reducing categories will help make the sidebar cleaner and force me to concentrate on putting my posts in the right place.

Goal: Write 1 theme post a week.

Reward For Achieving: Two Mountain Dews a day for a week.

Penalty For Not Achieving: No Mountain Dews for a week. (I am addicted, enough said.)

Reason: First an explanation of a theme post. By this I mean a once a week post like “Stats for the week” every Friday, or “Saturday Stumbling”. I have not yet decided on exactly what theme I will use but I will have it worked out by the end of the month.

Goal: Increase RSS readership by 20 readers per month.

Reward For Achieving: iTunes CD purchase.

Penalty For Not Achieving: I will have to come up with a penalty for this one.

Reason: I know 20 readers does not seem like a lot but think about it, that will give me 240 more readers which is not bad at all. Plus 20 readers a month is very manageable I believe if I stick to my other goals.

Goal: Get a PR of 5 by the end of 2008.

Reward For Achieving: Cruise to place of my better half’s choosing.

Penalty For Not Achieving: I don’t really have a penalty for this one…

Reason: If I have one goal that is way out there then this is it. I know a PR5 is almost impossible to achieve but it is definitely going to be my long-term goal for the year. Now if I can just get Google to give back my old PR I will be part of the way there already.

Tags: 2008 goals, motivation

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 19th, 2007 at 10:17 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.