New Year, New Me? Reviewing with Data
As we wind down to the end of January, it's a good time to reflect on the goals and habits we set during the New Year, New Me excitement. We have a few power-ups in our kit to help clarify whether or not it's a good idea to keep making progress or pivot to other projects, habits, or goals.
Personally I set a habit/goal of publishing a daily podcast - which I will do! That's exciting, but I don't think I'll continue (for now). As I review my time logs for January I can see I'll spend almost 20 hours on the podcast - more than my YouTube channel. Acting as a reporter, not a judge, I can see that's not how I want to spend my time. My creative focus should be on growing YouTube.
The time was well-spent though. I created a series of systems that helped me take my start to finish episode time from 1 hour down to 20-30 minutes. I have a workflow for developing ideas that I can use for the podcast or other creative outputs, including video, teaching lessons, and more. I also have published ideas I can share and repurpose for future content.
In the past I would have been tempted to keep going because I hit a milestone and have seen success (nearly 10,000 downloads this month). But since I defined the New Year habit as an outcome goal instead of a system goal, I am able to be very happy with the result while still saying "I'm going to stop doing this for a while, or maybe forever".
As we transition from January to February, take a bit of time to review your progress on New Year goals and habits. Act as a reporter, not a judge, review the results and any data you have — in my case it was tracked time — to make an informed decision to keep making progress or to pivot.
🎙️ Daily Dot Note-Taking Series
This week I tried something new on the Daily Dot - a six part series on QUICK Notes. I've talked about note-taking several times in the past 18 months and it's a key productivity power-up in the course.
If you've been looking for an easy-to-follow primer on how note-taking transforms productive output, check out the episodes below or find in your podcast player of choice! Check out my YouTube videos about notes too.