Goals for 2018It’s the beginning of the year, the time to set goals. My attitude toward goals is ambiguous at best.
Yet, I still set them year after year, so I set goals for 2018 too. I recognized that they are useful tools for focus in the long haul. Pondering them is a useful exercise on its own. I definitely consider the previous year to be the best in my life and not a small part of the reason was that I seriously pondered my goals for 2017. I drew conclusions from my past failures and prepared a better battle plan. If not that reflection, if not the change of the course, I might have gone insane already.

Hopefully, it will work the same way in 2018 (not going insane; having the best year of my life, that is). Like in 2017, my goals for 2018 are set by priority. Thus, the priority number one is:

#1 Prayer

I firmly believe my 2017 was awesome, because of my focus on prayer. When God is in the first place, everything is in the right place.

I freely admit I focus mostly if I say all of my prayers, not ‘how’ I say them. It’s because the quantity I can control, it’s not so with the quality.

Plus, in 2017, I added to my repository of quotes a sentence from “Revelations of a Divine Love” by Julian of Norwich, a medieval English mystic:

“For in dryness and bareness, in sickness and feebleness, then is your prayer well-pleasant to Me.”

The power of prayer lies not in spiritual ecstasy, but in the relationship. When there is a relationship, the space for effusions is created. But without relationship all ecstasies are false.

#2 Control My Daily Schedule

Especially on working days. Go to bed before 10 PM. Wake up about 5 AM. Work in the morning for myself. Reserve evenings for my church community, my family and occasional calls, because I have clients and friends all over the world and quite numerous in the USA, so my mornings are not the best time to be awake for them (11 PM to 4 AM EST).

This is my fundament. If I can do this, the rest of my goals will likely fall in place. If I blow this goal, others have low probability of materializing.

#3 Quality Time with My Family

I’ll keep this goal in the same form as in the previous year: to spend at least 1 hour a week with each of my kids and wife.

Now, when she quit her job and hinted that regular dates may be possible, maybe we can work out some fixed schedule for dates. Who knows?

In 2018, this goal is #3 because I want to have my schedule in order first. I failed with this goal in 2017 too many times because I had too much to do when I actually WAS at home. And too often, I was simply exhausted and sleep deprived.

I will also keep tracking this goal on my wall calendar. This is what kept my focus on it throughout the whole previous year.

#4 Automate My Businesses More

I need to revamp my landing page for coaching services and my coach’s profile on Coach.me.

I need to focus on one type of coaching more, and this will in effect allow me to use some scripts and pre-prepared materials in the process.

I should do the same for my book advertising business. I already know which books work best with my ads – nonfiction in the personal development genre.

Thus I should focus on authors with such books. Also, thanks to dozens of interactions with authors, I know what types of personalities are hard to work with.

Now, I need to define clear guidelines for myself as to which clients to refer to other services and which to accept. I need also to define follow-up rules, and procedures to register all interaction, because with increasing number of clients I’m getting swamped with all necessary actions and forget, sometimes for weeks, to follow up.

As you can see, I didn’t think this point through very well. Tracking my interactions with clients is a good start for a daily action regarding this goal.

#5 Publishing

I want to publish two books this year, one with Jeannie Ingraham and one on my own.

The first one, “99 Habit Success Stories,” is half-ready. We just need to collect more stories.

The second project has no title yet, but it will be the next volume of “Six Simple Steps to Success” series, the one about habits. I have plenty of content about this topic on Quora. I just need to reorganize it and put into a coherent whole. This one, I’ll probably release around September.

#6 Podcasting

I found it relatively hard to get on successful blogs with my guest posts. On the other hand, I already have been invited multiple times as a guest to a podcast. Most of the times, it happened after a host read my book.
My story is interesting enough, my expertise in self-publishing is attractive, and my progress in personal development is apparent. I have many angles to approach a podcast host, including the following I gathered in a by-the-way manner on Quora, Medium and my email list.

And I found giving interviews an easy way to spread my message. All I need is to show up and answer questions. It doesn’t absorb much of my time. It actually gives me the energy because I love to connect with people, and podcast hosts are usually a very interesting bunch.

As it is the lowest priority goal, I want to give an interview at least once a month. The one for January is ready. I gave an interview for View from the Top, and it will be on air within a few days.


Well, those are my goals for 2018

You have my permission to keep me accountable for them. And, as usual, I’ll report next year how I managed to achieve (or blow) them.

Goals for 2018

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