It’s now week two since communicating my new goals and things have been moving fast. I don’t have a clear strategy of how I’m going to break down how I’ll accomplish everything yet since I’ve been busy at work and making continual process.

Let’s recap what progress has been made on the goals I described in the last article.

Grow leadership

Have been growing influence by taking more meetings with people outside of my direct team to learn what other teams are doing to proactively create integration efforts for shared goals.

Lose 10 lbs before June

Went to the gym 3 times last week for twenty minutes each. Still short of the 5 times and thirty minutes that is recommended to stay healthy by most doctors but this week Chen and I will set a goal to go 4 times for at least 25 minutes.  We have an idea to pack our gym clothes in my car so we can stop directly after work. This should make it easier to go.

Reduce how much soda I drink

Was able to go a few days without soda and drank green tea instead. It’s been challenging but I have high hopes for the positive effects I would feel in my health by eliminating high sugar drinks.

Gain twitter followers

I’ve gained a few followers on my twitter organically from the beapython.dev blog but I haven’t been posting much the past week. Will strive for sending at least one influential tweet per day to gather impressions.

Learning chinese

I spent some time looking for a good learning book but there was a lot and I’m not sure what would provide the best results.  Thinking about learning off youtube like everyone else does these days if I can get recommendations for who to watch.

Finish four coding problems per week

I have finished 6 coding problems this week.  Several of these were medium difficulty problems involving dynamic programming.  I struggled to get to a working solution and by studying some of the ideas on the discussion board I was able to solve the problems. Working on focusing more in this area to increase my algorithm skills.

Once a week journaling

HERE I AM!  I secretly wanted to do two journals but something kept me from achieving that.  I’m not sure where all of my time went now that I’m thinking about it so I’ll need to do a better job managing that for next week.

Building blog traffic

Studied google search analytics to see what articles were getting traffic from what search results.  SEO is a very broad subject but it’s a useful activity for determining your blogs audience and learning what directions you can take your blog to add value to others.

Reading six books and watching less youtube

I can say that I have made no progress on this.  I did order two more Stephen Covey books. Will finish up “The four” and start reading through those.

Write better technical articles

I now remember where my time went.  Monday and Tuesday evening I spent writing up a thorough article on how to develop software. It didn’t get as many views in the first week as I thought it would and the r/programming community on Reddit completely down voted it into the ground but the feedback from r/learnprogramming was reasonable. I’m still trying to figure out what would provide value to both forums. Only time will tell if it’s even worth while to share my articles on reddit and hope that one day I will get enough organic traffic to be able to build a community of ambitious python developers without sharing new articles on reddit.  For this blog I’m not going to focus on sharing articles written here on social media and if people find them and click on them on their own than thank you!  There is no keyword plan, no grand ambitions of selling anything but simply me being me. Right now that probably not enough to get traffic but lets see what happens as I learn more about this internet blogging thing.

Build up passive income streams

To first recap my efforts here, lets break it down on a per stream level

• Single rental property – A tree fell in my backyard on my shed. 280$ to remove the tree and likely another 300$ to fix the shed. The house has been unoccupied for the last several months and my last tenant ripped out my countertops then moved out. This will likely be a loss this year.  Some years you take a L, remember investments are a risk. This will add another year or two before I get a second rental house but hopefully with the new tenants moving in this month will be reliable and long term. The landlords golden unicorn and I’ve been chasing it for 3 years now.
• Stock dividends- This is an off month for dividends and the stock market is in a weird state with the trade war,  people claiming we’re nearing a bubble burst, and the interest rates.  Overall the market is up for the year and dividends in long term growth stocks are still better than earning no return from a checking account.
• Beapython.dev blog – If 1$ a year counts as ‘passive’ income then this is doing great. With the help of a freelance writer we’ve been publishing two articles per week compared to the one article I put up in September and October.  I created a Patreon account for the site in hopes nice people out there will help support the blog and the vision. Nothing yet and I don’t expect many people to sign up in the first year but the account has been set up. I’ve learned the past week Patreon gives out A LOT of informational material to help you build patrons. Some insightful but it’s almost an overload.
• Credit cards points – In a way this is passive income because if you don’t use cash back points you’d just be losing that money.  I get about 20$ – 40$ a month in cash back points between two cards with various 5% per quarter cash back offers. Without making more I don’t envision myself spending more to increase this.  I also usually don’t spend much money because of a belief many people have that you should spend your income on assets, and spend money you earn from assets to spend on personal wants.  I’m still in the “how in the heck do I generate money from an asset” phase.  Most people think I’m just a cheapskate.  I still do appreciate a great time out to a restaurant or buying holiday gifts and decorations so this month will probably be a 50$ cash back month.

In summary I’ve ‘invested’ way more this month than I’ve generated back, but this is a long tail game and part of the purpose of these articles.

Be more intentionally mindful / Focus

These two really should be one goal.  I can’t recall what specific action I’ve taken this week to say that I’m making progress on this goal.  In actuality, they say a goal should be specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and time based.  Based on those criteria this is not a goal but still something I want to be more aware of and are values I am going to bring into how I approach the other goals during the lifetime of this blog.  Which even if I’m writing to a ghost town will be as long as I’m able to type.

Right now I’m watching, The Santa Claus, one of my favorite Christmas Movies and still writing this blog to make progress on my journaling goal and being more mindful of my priorities so that my friend is my wrap up for this ‘goal’.

Being a good family member

This value wasn’t in my last article but I still want to say Chen and I went shopping for a Christmas Tree this weekend and we came out and immediately set it up.  It’s amazing how decorations can make a house feel like a home and it was a great bonding experience.  Chen and I also shared a Masterclass membership with my cousin since they were running a buy two memberships for the price of one promo.  I’m excited to see what we all learn from this website and I’ll write a review on it somewhere in the future.

Conclusion

All in all it’s been a busy week. Things have come up to make me put more time into some areas more than others but thinking through this recap has enabled me to be able to re-balance and go into making next week proactive.  It’s important to remember our goals, values, principles and how these all come together to form our mission. Let’s keep driving those missions for all those that are important to us and making the world a better place.