A few months back I wrote a post here about why a blog is an excellent personal development tool. The other day I was watching the movie Julie and Julia (don’t ask), but because it was something that was the result of a blog, I was kind of curious about the story. I wanted to see if I could extract anything useful from watching it.
What struck me about 30 minutes into the movie was the main character set a goal, and used a blog to accomplish a goal. Sure, her goal was completely random, but it made me think that the process she followed might be a great formula for using a blog to accomplish any goal. In fact, many blogs start because of an effort to accomplish some sort of goal.
Choose a Goal
First, you want to choose a goal. Your goal should be something that you can track or measure. It could be losing weight, learning an instrument, or whatever it is you want to do. For the sake of what I’m talking about, let’s use something like learning to play guitar. I can’t play the guitar, but I have played a musical instrument for an extended period of my life. Yep, I was a band geek.
Start Your Blog
Whatever platform you use for the purposes of this exercise doesn’t really matter. You don’t have to get advanced in terms of designing a site or even having your own domain. You can get away with something as simple as a free WordPress.com blog. I will say this, however. Because the barrier to entry to using those platforms is so low, you might be more motivated to follow through if you go through a more difficult process to get started. Just some food for thought.
Start Writing
The first thing you’ll want to do is take some sort of action towards the goal. In the case of the guitar, let’s say you bought a guitar. That’s your first blog post. The strange thing is that you don’t have to take much action every day. Your next post could be about learning to play Twinkle Twinkle little star. Take a little bit of action and write a post.
Review Your Progress
Blogs are interesting because they provide a forced mechanism to review your progress. You don’t write massive amounts, and it’s a small amount of effort on a consistent basis. As many personal development experts have said, reviewing your top goals every single day tends to propel us in the direction of our goals.
Make Note of The Evidence
Perhaps one of those most useful things about using a blog to accomplish any goal is that it enables you to make note of the evidence. Let’s say your goal is somewhat big and seems far off. For a large percentage of that time, it will seem like there is no progress being made. A blog is a great way to break your goal up into bite size pieces and get there one brick at a time. In fact, goals happen as a result of doing small things consistently. Additionally, you’ll be seeing evidence that you are making frequent progress towards your goal.
Have a goal that you can’t figure out how to reach? Start a blog, take action towards the goal, write about it, and review the goal, and keep making note of the evidence (i.e. posting to your blog), until you’ve achieved your goal.
Have you used a blog to accomplish a goal? Please share your stories in the comments below.
Excellent post! I really believe it’s possible to reach goals by using a blog. I know it’s worked for me and I couldn’t have written these steps any better. Great advice!
Solid advice Srini,
I think you present a formula here which applies to even more than blogging, perhaps to success in general: you set goals, you act, you learn and you adapt. A powerful combination.
@Eduard: Thanks for comments. I think that you are right that we could apply this formula to almost anything. There’s definitely something to be said for it. It only struck me when I saw that movie that a blog could be a perfect tool to facilitate the entire process of setting goals. I have a feeling this idea could be developed even further possibly into an ebook or short course.
Great advice. I started my blog partly to become a better writer and partly to explore finding a calling. While the larger goal of finding a calling seems to have become an ongoing (and permanent) process, I think I’ve become a much better writer, simply by the practice of writing on a regular basis. And I think if people followed your advice to test new areas of interest or to explore new ways to play, blogs might be more interesting for all of us to read :)
(speaking of which, where is the surfer dude blog?)
@Ami: The Surfer dude blog is something I tried to start, but didn’t quite take because I already had an audience at Skool of Life. Who knows maybe I will restart my SToked for Life blog when I have enough money to take off on my year long surf trip around the world. I really think we could accomplish many goals if we took this approach to them. I think it gives us a perfect opportunity to break our goals into pieces and accomplish them.
A straight forward and excellent formula. Formerly I had a blog without any goal and it failed. Now I have restarted to blog again (in end of March 2010) with a goal in mind. (Failure is the best teacher, agree?). Although I’m no expert in my blog’s niche (which is ‘Finding simplicitiy in life), I’m learning and blogging along the way. Perhaps we may learn something from each other too.
By the way, I’m one of your blog’s subscriber.
@Alex: Congrats on not giving up. When somebody interviewed me the other day I realized I had about 5 blogs that all failed. They were all blogspot blogs with no sort aim or goal. I think we are all continually learning from each other. Thanks for being a subscriber. I’ll be checking out your blog today.
Just over one year ago, I publicly declared on my blog that I was going to change countries and find a new career. Prior to that I spent years procrastinating and making excuses for not trying something new. It was my blog that forced me to finally follow through on my plans.
Blogging changed my life! Now if only I could make some money off of it. :-)
@John: I think it’s only a matter of time before you start making money off of it. The thing is that you have the goal and the blog forces your review of the goal. In fact I recommending writing a post on where you are at with your goals once a quarter and if you’re really ambitious once a week. I try to do a monthly review and I also do a quarterly review. I always find those really useful.
Excellent post. I wrote a blog 4 months ago about wanting to spend more time being “in the moment”. I created a list of things I could to do to accomplish this. I committed to my blog audience to write about my experience. The problem was, I wrote the initial blog while sitting on the beach in Hawaii. What happens when I write a blog while in total relaxation mode, I visualize eutopia and believe in miracles.
I was able to follow through on my goal of living in the moment , however, I did not stick to writing about my experience. Looking back on it now, I realize I felt a little guilty that I was on the beach and away from my business. I am building and growing my business and at the time I was not being consistent with writing a blog. The truth is, I really wanted to just sit on the beach – go figure.
Guilt led me to committing to a should
When I realized that I had over committed I told the truth to my blog audience. I gave myself permission to let it go. That particular blog thread did not see its rightful end but it was the end that worked for me.
I love your blog Srinivas. I always feel the wisdom in your words. Thank you
Gerianne,
Thank you for the kind words. Guilt is one of those things I think we’ve been programmed with. Personally, I would have no guilt about sitting on the beach in Hawaii. Letting things go is really essential. I think maybe one thing I left out of this post was not having attachment to the goal you are trying to accomplish and just being focused on the process.
Hi Srinivas,
I didn’t feel that guilty haha. It is the process of self reflection and looking at what gets in our way that is so compelling. Being able to articulate these through the blog is an amazing process. Then we know we are living our truth
Gerrianne
Hi Srinivas,
I’m doing exactly what you’ve suggested on my blog, and it definitely works!
Topi
@Topi: Glad to hear it :). It’s amazing how much something as simple as a blog can drive you toards your goals.
that;s a good idea Srinivas
also when you share your goals with your readers it will be embarrassing not to achieve them since every body already knows about them :)
Hi Srinivas,
I have never thought about a singular goal regarding my blog, but I like the idea. For me, it comes down to the primary reason I blog, “To share my heart with others.”
If, through what I write, I can make a positive impact, provide inspiration or give encouragement at the right time, then that’s a worthy goal.
Thanks for providing this point-of-view.
Alex
@Alex: I Think you do an amazing job sharing your heart with others. I think for each of us we have a bit of both. Some of the things you mentioned are definitely a few of the reasons I love writing. Blogs with the aim of a particular goal could become really interesting because once the goal is accomplished that person may realize the power of what he or she is doing and accomplish a series of goals.
great post as usual!
Great post. Blogging has help me define my direction in life. I think it’s a must for any aspiring writer. Your blog looks great.
Thanks for sharing
Peace
Jonathan
“Every human is an artist. The dream of your life is to make beautiful art.” Don Miguel Ruiz
Nice piece, Srinivias! Maybe I should start a learning-the-guitar blog. (“Today, I had to cut my lovely nails. A traumatic moment.”)
I’ve definitely seen a lot of dieters use blogs to good effect … the one who comes to mind is Shauna Reid, aka Dietgirl (www.dietgirl.org) who not only succeeding in losing a heck of a lot of weight, she also got a book deal. It helps that she’s a great writer!
Whoops, apologies for the erroneous “i” that jumped into your name. My brain and fingers aren’t co-operating today…
Hey Ali,
Thanks for the comments. Yeah, I figured losing weight might be one of the best goals to start a blog for. It has all the necessary components of a goal. It’s measurable, actionable and you can keep doing progress updates. On the guitar playing, let me know if you decide to do that. I’d be interested to see how somebody would use this in learning a musical instrument.
Great post. I actually started my blog to learn to make money with blogs. After only a week, I’ve made a couple bucks and my site is already taking me in different directions. Now I need to decide whether to stay the path of the original goal or enjoy the ride. Thanks.
Hey Srini!
Nice to see you here man :)
Love the post, it’s so true. The things you can achieve with a blog are enormous, you can literally reach millions of people with your words and ideas. Never give up!
Cheers
Diggy
I love this post. It just reaffirms the right decision I made to start a blog to improve my writing skills and creative thinking. With so many tools at our disposal, it can be easy to overlook true gems to help improve your life.
I have used a journal in the past to keep track of goals and how I’m progressing, but it hadn’t occurred to me to essentially use a blog as a more public form of tracking a goal. It seems like a great way to stay accountable and get feedback and positive reinforcement.