What Do You Hope To Accomplish This November?

Do you have a regular cadence for personal development? Do you have time to look forward, and time to reflect on the past? With a small pivot, I'm going to leverage my blogging habit to help me more effectively grow as a leader. 

 

For the first three months of this blogging challenge, I've used the first and last blog posts each month to write about the challenge looking forward and back. For November and going forward, I'm broadening my first and last blog posts of the month to include all aspects of my life. Now, the first blog posts will be looking forward, casting vision, and setting goals for the month (or year, in January). The last blog post of the month will reflect on the progress I've made and what I've learned along the way. Again, it'll be like my weekday blogging challenge articles, but it'll expand to include all aspects of my life.

I've already paused the Path Of The Freelancer blog for the year. I'll follow suit at the end of this month here on my website. While I'm looking forward to my break from writing in December, I'm also satisfied with the articles I've written this year. 

 

In fact, I've created 97 new articles in 2017 with another 22 slated. By year's end, I'll have added 119 new items (40%) for a total count of 285 unique pages. I'm astonished at how four months of weekday blogging can tip the scales so drastically and quickly. Seeing this information gives me renewed energy for blogging in the month of November. 

My goal is simple and focused for November. Complete the weekday blogging challenge. Since finishing can be one of the hardest aspects of a race, I want to do so strong. The month of November has twenty-two weekdays one of which falls on Thanksgiving and I intend to publish on all of these days. I'll have plenty of time in December to rest, so it's grit time. 

 

To help me stay on track, I'll be blogging alongside others. Here are my fellow weekday blogging challenge writers. 

My top tier goal for freelancing is logging 130 paid hours per month. For the month of October, this required work from 13 of my clients with four of them making up a majority of these hours. I've got more than enough hours slated for November with a few new leads as well. This will be my first year sustaining an average hourly rate with my top tier goal. Simply put, I've peaked and stayed there. It's awesome to arrive at this state of freelance flourishing. 

 

I suspect the final two months will end the year out as my best financial year ever, and my best freelance workload to date. And, I also completed this on top of buying a house, changing communities, publishing my first book and doing this weekday blogging challenge. 

 

So yes, I'm gloating here, but it feels great to accomplish this. Ultimately, I'm grateful for the grace of God and support of people around me to make it happen. 

Out my leadership development through the Leaders Lyceum, I created a rhythm to spend one-on-one time with each of my kids weekly. I had a monthly schedule already in place, but I wanted to take it up a notch. 

 

For the summer, it meant I was teaching the kids how to swim. Once the pool closed, it changed to drawing lessons with them. Unfortunately, the art time didn't last long as the chaos of life bumped it around and I failed to pick it back up. 

 

My goal on this front is to sort this out and I'm leaning towards dropping the weekday one-on-one time for now and just embracing daily group time together instead. 

 

We've been doing daily group time awhile and it's something the kids look forward to. I'll curate numerous videos on youtube, and we'll sit together and watch the list until our bedtime routine. It's a relaxing and fun activity.

With our new home, church family, and neighborhood community, life is great right now. I'd prefer to be completely debt free (excluding the home), but it'll be two or three years before we pay off our student loans and the minivan. I look forward to this moment when we can embrace our success more fully. 

 

I've begun the process of increasing my hourly rate for next year to ninety dollars per hour (Starting with all new clients). The brewing goal for next year is discovering how I can work a little less, earn the same amount, and continue building towards a writing career. My intent is to leverage this financial margin to invest more time in my family, church, and community.

 

At the end of November, I'd simply like to maintain what we've got going on without adding to our plate, other than Thanksgiving fun, and thinking about my plans for 2018. At this end of this month, I'll check back in to provide an annual update of my journey through 2017. 

 

What about you? What goals do you hope to accomplish by month's end? How about by the end of the year?

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Photo by Štefan Štefančík on Unsplash