Written by Jason Montoya. Posted in My Life.

June 2018: Mini Blogging Break, Experiment Updates, & A New Monthly Goal

What do you aspire to accomplish in the month of June? Have you written down your goals for the month?

Last month was jammed pack with work, life, and play. There was too much going on, and it hindered my ability to make progress on my book for small business owners. It also wore me out. My primary direction this month is to slow down, shrink the number of objectives, and take a break in a few different ways. The first form of a break will happen here on this blog.

I've been blogging three times per week on average this year. Normally, I take at least a month off at the end of each year from blogging, but now that I'm writing often my strategy requires adaptation.

My plan now is to pause publishing new blog posts for two weeks (with one more post coming out after this one) giving me time to rejuvenate and ideate on the second half of blogging 2018. I also intend to take some weekdays off, and possibly some half days from my freelancing work, while also minimizing new experiments.

My June 2018 Goal

With too much going on and a desire for focus, my only goal this month is reading & editing my book for entrepreneurs. The Jump: Launching the Perpetual Small Business Forward needs a read through from beginning to end. Last month I realized this first read through will require more organization and flow than I remembered. Once I get through the first pass, it'll go smoother and faster each subsequent time.

Sandboxing My Life

As usual for my monthly reflection point looking forward, here's a list of new experiments and updates on old ones.

New Experiments

Twitter Moments: I published my first Twitter Moment about my most popular blog post (Last Jedi Backlash). You can check out the moment on Twitter here. Simply publishing a moment didn't result in anything fruitful. I'll need to experiment more with this or wait until I have a larger Twitter following for these to get any traction.
Moringa Leaf Powder: After hearing about adding Moringa powder to a daily cup of tea for additional health benefits, I decided to test it out. Unfortunately, I broke out in a rash days after starting this practice. I'm not entirely sure it was related so I'll test it out one more time to verify. If not, I may have to explore other options. If you're interested, here's the link to buy the Moringa powder on Amazon (affiliate).

Existing Experiment Updates

RZIM Writing Contest: Unfortunately, I finished my article a day later than the contest finished. Since I was writing the article for myself, and not to win the contest, I'm content that it was simply motivation to make this blog post happen.
Social Media Engagement: I've continued to engage with others on Twitter commenting and tweeting. Twitter is a great topical discussion forum and also is a terrific compliment to live events like the NBA Playoffs. While this has been enjoyable, I'm not sure I've yet to see any tangible evidence that it's helping to grow my digital footprint.
Simple Blog Text Graphics: While I paused doing this for every new blog article, adding the graphic elevates the blog post so I added it to my truth article. I'll use it when I tweet out the blog.
Email Subject Line Clarifiers: I'm continuing to leverage these clarifiers. It helps me know what to expect from others, but I'm not sure how helpful it is to the reader. I'll need to take a moment and reevaluate how I'm doing it, what's working and what's not.
Optimizing Sleep: Since purchasing a purple pillow, I've been working on optimizing my sleep quality. The pillow was a step, and a few weeks ago I redownloaded SleepCycle to start tracking my sleep quality. What factors are contributing in a positive way and which ones are detracting from my sleep? After a month or two, I'll have a large enough sample size to know how I maximize my sleep quality.