Squid-Goals for the New Year

I hope you had a wonderful holiday season both personally and on Squidoo!  It's always good to see those holiday sales.  And yes, it's always sad to see them dwindle away.

Don't worry.  Instead, get started updating lenses for the new year.  People will be making resolutions: Do you have lenses to inspire them?  Weight loss and fitness are two very hot topics right now, but I saw Valentine's Day candy in Walmart yesterday.  Yes, there's another holiday coming up soon.  Are your lenses ready?  Look ahead to spring with its warmer weather and busy gardening season.  And then there's Easter, which is late this year so April should be a great month for sales.

There's no rest for the weary lensmaster!  Have you set your goals for the upcoming year?  We'll be talking about goals on RocketSquids in the upcoming week.  If  you're new to Squidoo and have fewer than 25 lenses, why not join us?  Our goal is to teach and inspire you. I'd love to see you there!

Whatever your goals and plans for the upcoming year, here's to a happy and prosperous 2014!

Wow! It's Wednesday!

Just realized that it's Wednesday, halfway through the week already.  Wow, time flies when I'm having fun!

It's also the 16th of January, already halfway through the first month of the new year.  I started the year feeling very "up" and ambitious, ready to set goals and meet them head-on.  So, I just pulled up the notepad file I made titled "goal notes" to see how I'm doing.  (To be honest, I was a little bit afraid to look.)

Not bad, really.  A few extra-strong points and one or two weak ones, but overall not looking bad for 50 percent of the way through the month and 4 percent through the year.  I see how I need to adjust my focus and I'll be working on that.  Definitely see that if I'm going to finish them, I need to spend more time dispersing those lenses that have fallen so low in lensrank.  (Yep, one of those weak points.)

It really does pay to assess goals periodically.  Have you looked at yours lately?  How are you doing?

Resolved: Become a Better Writer

Happy New Year!  Wow, seems like only yesterday we wondered if the power would still be on when we crossed over into the year 2000.  Now, going into 2013, all we have to worry about is falling off a fiscal cliff.  But that's a topic for another day (and another blog).

Did you read the Hello January post on SquidooHQ today?  In it I mentioned seven things to do this month and to keep in mind throughout the new year.  One of those things has to do with working outside your comfort zone in order to become a better writer.  A day or two after I wrote that, I happened upon this from the Writer's Don't Cry section of Amazon's Omnivoracious blog.   The article includes 10 resolutions for writers, things you can do this year to hone your craft. Idea number five, to exercise your writing, expands more on the practice of writing outside your comfort zone.  Looks like I was onto something with my similar suggestion!

If you're a writer (and if you're a lensmaster, you are a writer) and want to improve your writing skills, give that article a read.  The "comfort zone" topic really resonated with me and I'd love to know which of the 10 tips speak to you.  Would you let me know in a comment below?

Here's wishing each of us a happy, healthy, and productive 2013.  May each of our lenses be better written and more successful than the ones that came before!

New Year's Resolution: Re-Balance the Scale

It's really hard to believe that Christmas is just a few days away. It's been a nice holiday sales season and I'm not looking forward to watching the volume of Squidoo visits and sales start dropping like Santa's tired elves on December 26th.

I do have a couple of lenses that I'm counting on for after-Christmas shoppers, though, then there's the New Year's resolutions crowd and I'm hoping to profit from that as well. Valentine's Day will be next. After that, Easter will be here before we know it, then summer, then we'll start preparing for Christmas all over again. Say it with me: Time flies when you're having fun!

This year has been different for our family. We spent the first few months building a new house and the next several months getting it furnished and settling in. With all that we've had going on for the last year and a half, my concentration has been on family. And you know what? It's been nice! But now it's time to get back to business.

For me, it's time to re-balance the priority scale. Family will always be first, but I'm looking forward to having some time freed up again to dedicate to the online things that I love. Over the next several days I'll be reassessing, setting goals, and making lists and plans for 2013. It's been a very, very good year, but it's time to move on. I can hardly wait!

How about you? Have you made any New Year's resolutions? Feel free to share your thoughts and goals.

Image used via a Creative Commons license

Looking Ahead: Goal-Setting for the New Year

Oh, my, another year has come and (almost) gone.  It's time to evaluate the goals you set this time last year and try again to come up with a new set of goals for 2012.

Actually, there's more to it than that.  While goal setting is important, reviewing progress and adjusting plans at various points throughout the year is even more important.

To be honest, I'm not very good at long-term goal setting.  "Life" changes things sometimes in the blink of an eye (I know that all too well), so I don't like to set myself up for failure right from the start.  Obviously I, too, need to not only set yearly goals and make plans, I need to concentrate on short-term goals and set aside time to adjust as necessary on a regular basis.

There are many goal-setting tools available and I'm sure I have at least two or three "how to set goals" e-books on my hard drive that I've purchased or downloaded for free with the greatest of intentions.  But I'll admit that I am easily overwhelmed when it comes to tackling the job of reading the books and putting plans behind the goals and action behind the plans.  So, this year what I intend to do (good intentions as usual, but I think this will work for me) is to simply write monthly goals in the front of a stenographer's notebook (the size suits me), record plans for the month, and then write a daily to-do list each night or early morning.  I've been doing the daily lists for the past few weeks and that method is working well for me.

Have you started planning and setting goals for 2012?  How do you do it?  I'd love if you'd share your methods and favorite resources here.  Perhaps the way you plan will ring true with someone who reads your comment, someone like me who struggles in this area.  So please, leave a comment below.  Your suggestions could really help someone have a truly productive new year!