It’s the end of the month. It’s the end of the quarter. And it also happens to be halfway through the year. The calendar is practically screaming at me that it’s time to review my progress on this year’s goals and adjust them if I need to.

I introduced the idea of the Daily Meeting System in an article called “This Sounds Nuts! But I Think You’ll Like It” in the Chasing Wisdom Blog-Zine. I’ve been using the system since then to move towards my goals. I’ve also been using it to see how it works and find ways to improve it.

Some of the things I’ve learned have been kind of funny. I’ve written steps on my weekly sheet that I had to move to the following week because I didn’t do them. At the end of the second week I’ve gotten frustrated with myself for not doing them still. But when I backed up and thought about it, I realized they weren’t helpful and they weren’t interesting. I was pretty smart not to do them, but I was too dumb to realize it!

For example, I had a step that said something like “Sketch guidelines for time-limited groups that combine training and coaching.” I still haven’t done it. I’ve thought about it and changed my mind a few times but never really got much on paper. I realized I’m not likely to come up with the guidelines, such as length of individual calls and number of people in the group and how much written material to use, until I’m actually planning a group. Having groups is on my list for down the road. Of course it would be helpful if I had it all planned once I get ready to run a group, but really, I won’t know what I need to include until I’m getting ready for the group. So it was a silly step that I finally set aside.

Mid-year is a great time to look at your annual goals to see how they’re doing. Notice I didn’t say to see how you’re doing. Look at the goals first. Were they reasonable? Were they in order? Have they been moving you towards your long-term vision? You’re halfway through this leg of your journey. It’s a great time to assess your progress and decide which route you’ll enjoy for the rest of the way.

I have a long-term goal of having ten to twelve coaching clients, but I’ve kept my number of clients very low while I work on other things. I adjusted my annual goal for clients recently after I decided I’m only ready to add up to three new clients, one every couple of weeks at the most. It will probably be a year or so before I’m ready for the higher number. Adjusting the number meant I have adjusted the steps I plan for getting the word out about my coaching practice. It’s been much more low-key and at a slower pace.

I realized in the past month that I want to focus a lot of my time on writing information products, and I want to include some creative writing in my schedule every day if possible. That time is available to me because I’m not spending a lot of time redesigning and developing web sites. Looking at the order of projects and stages, it became obvious I won’t have clear direction for changing my web sites until I have finished writing some information products and maybe developed a recorded product.

Reviews like this are obviously a great opportunity for self-criticism and despair, but I’ve learned some things to keep me from falling down that hill. I look at the unfinished steps and the avoided goals and wonder, What can I learn from this?

Sometimes I learn that I expected something to be enjoyable and it just wasn’t. Sometimes I learn that when I brainstormed things I needed to do I included some “shoulds” that weren’t really necessary. And sometimes I learn there are things I have to do for now, until I make enough money to pay someone else to do them, that are important even though they’re boring.

Those are just about the only things on my list of unfinished steps that I wind up keeping. The things that turned out to be less enjoyable and the things that turned out to be unnecessary get tossed aside. Then I have a fairly short list of things I have to do that I would prefer not to.

If you haven’t put any goals down on paper or on a mind map or a project board, it’s a perfect time to start. You can plan projects, or at least stages of projects, for the rest of summer (it just started) and for the fall. You can even decide to take a break from Thanksgiving until after the New Year. That leaves plenty of time to make progress. And trust me, even finding out the goals you set aren’t really goals you want, or are for the distant future and not for this year, is enormous progress.

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey