Goals by Blog
Lorelle VanFossen over at the Blog Herald shares her thoughts on how your blog can help you stick to your commitments. It’s a well written article, per usual for Lorelle, and I agree. You know, you if write a post to inform everyone you’ll be seeding the secrets to a successful sexual relationship every Thursday for the next sixth months then you might want to follow through, or your motivation to do so will be greater than if you keep the goal a prisoner in your internal jail of grand ideas.
I’ll add one additional piece of advice for setting goals and commitments by blog.1 By all means publicize them on your own site, but while you’re at it do it somewhere else as well. Blogs can become deeply personal beasts. It’s easy to lose perspective. “Oh did I say I’d do that? Damn, but I really had to trim my toenails today. Sorry. Maybe next week.” No big deal right? Maybe, maybe not, but it’s easy to let things slip.
Think of it this way, unless you’re one of those boldly driven folks, then chances are you let things slip from time to time, an appointment here, a phone call there. Could be the consequences weren’t all that dire so it felt like an acceptable trade-off, or you simply didn’t give a crap to begin with. Whatever the case, our blogs can easily morph into a reflection of our personalities. When, or if, they do setting commitments and goals by blog run the same risks as setting commitments and goals in real life.
And thus my suggestion to set the goal elsewhere as well. Have a friend throw up a post on their blog about your new goal, or be a guest blogger elsewhere to talk a little bit about the idea, or do what I did and use some service to challenge yourself to a new commitment. Once the goal’s out there, freed from the orbit of your own blog’s gravity, there’s less a chance it’ll plummet to a fiery death. So if you’ve got a goal or commitment you’d like to make, say it more than once, and say it in more than one place.
- I’m God awful at sticking to goals. I’m great at creating them, but atrocious at keeping them. I tend to never see my adherence to them as a reflection of any lack on my part. It’s a bit existential, per my want, but keep in mind taking advice from me on this topic is a bit like taking advice on how to stay sober from the drunk slumped in the corner stool. However, I’ve recently followed this admonition and it did seem to help, or it worked in keeping me tuned to my goal.[↩]
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