How I did on my Goals for the First Quarter of the Year?

Hello folks, I am back! I am officially done with the blogging break (which by the way was extremely relaxing and rejuvenating), so now you can expect to see me here every single week, going back to my regular posting schedule, talking about books & blogging, like I always do. 🙂

Having said that, going forward, I am planning on changing the direction of this blog, just a little bit, so there will be newer, different kind of content for you to look forward to. That is, in addition to whatever I already post, because I am not phasing out anything that I already do/post on here. But more on that in a different post.

Because for now I know I have some catching up to do, since while I was on this break, there were a couple of posts which were due, and are now kinda delayed – my Quarterly Goals posts being among them.

Nonetheless, I am still going to go ahead & publish these posts, because public accountability is the #1 thing that keeps me motivated to work on them, and so I don’t want to slack off here.

Quarterly Goals – The What, Why, and the How!

(If you aren’t new here, skip this introductory section)

If this is the first time you are here, and you have no idea what these Quarterly Goals posts are all about, and why I do them in the first place, you can check out this post.

But here is the gist – every quarter I set between 10-20 goals for myself (spanning several areas of my life), and I review these goals at the end of the quarter. If I manage to accomplish 75% (or more) of these goals, then I declare the quarter a win. If not, I get to come to this very-public platform and announce a fail, which is so not fun. But as it happens, public humiliation works as a strong motivator (for me anyway), so I stick to this format.

Now coming to the particular goals I am reviewing today, if you are interested in reading why I set the goals I set for the past quarter, you can check it out here.

And now without further ado, let’s get started with the update, and see if this quarter was a win or a fail.

Quarterly Goals – Update

This last quarter was kind of interesting. As you know I had a long list of goals, but what happened was that within a month into the quarter, I had to deal with a pretty big project that I had procrastinated for the longest time, but could no longer ignore. And so that dominated my quarter, even though it did not make an appearance in the goals I had explicitly listed out for the quarter.

This is not to say that I did not work on the goals I had listed. In-fact I got through quite a few of them. However since almost 70% of my time was dedicated to this new project, I couldn’t get to every single goal I had listed.

That being said, let’s get on with the failures & successes of the quarter, starting with the former, well because, it’s always great to end on a high note, right?

The Failures!

1. Blog Posting Goals on Shanaya Tales & The Love of Spice – Okay, so these were 2 separate goals, but both of them weren’t accomplished for the same reason. As I have mentioned earlier, this quarter I took on a project to completely revamp my blog, and this included quite a few things from technical fixes to SEO updates. Now this was a relatively urgent project, because there were parts of the site that were breaking down and required immediate attention.

But then for some reason I felt like the past quarter was also the best time to learn Pinterest, which was a whole different beast, and took a lot more time and energy than I had expected or was willing to spend on it at the time.

Which meant that I was putting in crazy hours trying to get it all done, and was only accomplishing in getting myself closer to a total burnout. However good sense prevailed, and I decided to take a break to maintain my sanity.

But that also meant that all kinds of posting came to a complete halt, which is why I failed these two goals.

2. Sort all photos & videos – I would like to say that I couldn’t get this done because of the above mentioned project. Trust me, I would. But you and I would both know that that would be a lie.

Anyway, while this is still not done, I have some good news on this front. I have finally managed to work out a complete inventory of the things that need to be sorted. And I have also made my way through the bulk of the sorting. But since the goal says all, I don’t think I can mark this done until it is all done. So it stays there for now. My standard failure every quarter. Sigh.

The Victories!

Now come the victories…

1. Plan Family Vacation Goal – This is clearly done. If you are following me on social media you know that I planned (and planned) & even executed the plan. Family Vacation – check!

2. Fitness Goals – All 3 fitness goals were a success. Admittedly they were easy goals on the cardio & strength front, but I really needed those low pressure baby steps to get on track. As far as the portion control goal is concerned – I did manage to succeed at it, but only barely, and only because I am feeling like being generous with myself. However I have gotten much better at it now, in the second quarter, so I am not going to nitpick here, and going to go easy on myself for once.

3. Reading Goals – I had 4 reading goals, and I managed to succeed at all of them. Well, there is one that is kinda complicated, so let me address that first. I had a goal to buddy-read Anna Karenina. And while technically we did start the buddy-read, that is about all that we did. Because ever since then we both have been struggling with the book. I haven’t yet given up, but at this moment I am still undecided on whether I should continue or let it go. If you have read the book – please tell me if it gets better. Or even if the struggle is worth it?

That being said, I totally rocked the other 3 reading goals. As you know I am trying to read all of Austen this year, so one of my goals was to read Persuasion in the first quarter, which I did. So check √. My other goal was to read 2 books that have movie adaptations coming out this year, and I actually exceeded this goal by reading 3 books instead of 2 (reviews to come soon). So check again √.

The final reading goal was to get to 8 pending review requests, and while it might seem like a relatively ambitious goal – I am happy to say that I actually accomplished this, and more! In fact I managed to read and review 10 books from my pending review pile, which was amazing, because it made a significant dent in my commitments and really reduced my TBR anxiety (for now).

FINAL SCORE: I got to 8/11 of my goals, which means I got to about 73% of my goals. Now technically since it’s not 75%, this would mean a FAIL, but this time I am choosing to ignore the calculator. Because let’s face it, I don’t want to live in a world where 8/11 is a fail.

Which is why I hereby announce the quarter a SUCCESS ! 😀 *applause*

That’s all from my end, folks. I will be back soon with my goals for the next quarter. In the meanwhile, I would love to hear from you guys. Do you guys set quarterly goals too? Or goals in general? How do you track them? Do share!

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