The Super "Become Independent" Daily Journal Thread

[Matt Willard]

DAY 345 - MAY 14, 2010

Happy things today! I've made some definite progress on my college application - the financial aid junk seems to have gone through and I can finally apply for classes again! Gotta do some junk on the side, but hell, I can apply for classes and that's a plus.

I also got a weekly column on All Freelance Writing now to make fun of current trends. Great practice for my joke-writing skills, especially on a deadline. It's 25 bucks a week, but hell, I'll take it so I can expand my resources.

Tomorrow should be pretty busy. Gonna draft the first column, finish that blog update, and then attack college stuff.

[Matt Willard]

DAY 346 - MAY 15, 2010

Much work was done. Finished my Iron Man 2 Mini-Review and my draft of my first weekly column. Of course, the college has an ass-backwards class registration system (or I just don't understand it) so I have to call them on Monday for help. And I gotta get the printer for this other stuff, which won't be for a while. Topped it off with admittedly lame networking, further cementing my belief that I need to seek more direct channels.

Tomorrow I need to get back to working on that speech and redoing my website.

[Matt Willard]

DAY 347 - MAY 16, 2010

Bit of a tough day. Really struggled to revise my website's copy - I'm bad at copywriting - and had a hard joke-writing day. Ah, well. Tomorrow I finish that column for good, revise that speech, and make some phone calls.

[Matt Willard]

DAY 349 - MAY 18, 2010

Even my day off was interesting! Landed an assignment from a past client, so I'm pretty happy and grateful about that. Yesterday I also finished my column, worked on my speech, and worked on renovating my website. That in itself is a big project...still struggling with a particular setup I want to make, but I'll see it through.

Tomorrow I've got quite a bit to do. Work on this new assignment, work on the speech, make some phone calls and other college business. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna chill out for the rest of the night

[Matt Willard]

DAY 350 - MAY 19, 2010

Today was kind of...everywhere. Still, I bought a bunch of magazines for submission purposes, studied them to discover how I can aim my humor, and drafted my recent assignment. No biggie.

Tomorrow I really gotta get back to that speech. Plus, I need to fiddle around more with my site if I want to get it into that portfolio style.

[Matt Willard]

DAY 351 - MAY 20, 2010

Grrr. Humor writing block rears its ugly head again. Using a new tip, I talked myself through it - after all, I come up with some of my best material in the bathroom :V It helped a bit here, but sometimes these jokes are amazingly hard to write, you know?

After that I realized that it was hard for me to focus lately, so I decided to try something - thirty minutes of focused work, followed by short mini-breaks. After four work sessions, I get the normal thirty minutes. Tried this on my website work, and it seems to work well, but it'll require future testing. Besides that, I've decided to install a new theme which will help me shift my blog into a real portfolio site. That'll take some effort, but overall it should be more cohesive.

Tomorrow I'll use this new idea to work on my writing and see how long I can keep trucking. Mostly working on assignments, plus an update for the blog.

[Matt Willard]

DAY 352 - MAY 21, 2010

I only did five hours and thirty minutes of work today. But you know what? They were all PRODUCTIVE hours. No distractions. Just pure work. Tore through my assignment, began another, and began designing my new blog theme. Plus, with a new systematic approach to joke writing, I never felt truly blocked. I am quite pleased.

Time will tell how I stick to this strategy, but I'm liking it so far. Tomorrow, though? A much deserved day off.

[Matt Willard]

DAY 353 - MAY 22, 2010

Tomorrow I need to work on the column and a blog update. Plus my much underappreciated speech :V

[Matt Willard]

DAY 354 - MAY 23, 2010

Okay, I lied. Took another day off today because I felt I needed it. But it was pretty boring overall, so now I'm eager to get back to work, if only for the sheer fact of having something to do :V

[Matt Willard]

DAY 355 - MAY 24, 2010

Six hours of work. Wrapped up my goals for the column and the blog update, as well as spent time working on the new theme, and a bit of networking/reading when my energy took a hit. Tomorrow I'll attend to column / blog, plus setting up a Twitter background to restore my energy a bit before writing up something to pitch to a magazine.

[Matt Willard]

DAY 356 - MAY 25, 2010

Three hours. Had to step out because my "office" desperately needed to get sprayed for bugs. Tried to keep my outing productive by gathering ideas. I'm not proud of this. Tomorrow I have to go up to the college and take a finance management class, so when I get back from that, I really want to work on some articles and stuff. I'm confident I can do it, though.

[Matt Willard]

DAY 357 - MAY 26, 2010

Two hours. Today could've gone a lot better. I completely miscalculated when my class began, and now I gotta reschedule it. At least I cleared up the problem that wouldn't let me register other classes online. Did some other minor work, but...eh.

Well, I strictly adhere to the policy introduced by Steve - I don't let myself make up for bad work days by "cheating" with my day off. But I am interested in making the next cycle better. Here is my two-pronged plan of attack:

-Work for a minimum quota of seven hours during workdays.
-Compliment this with a thirty-day trial to drill the new belief in my head that I am extremely productive.

That's what I'm doing on my day off, basically. I'm making the plans for that while registering for classes. Oh, and playing around with writing a comic script for fun. That kind of thing.

[Matt Willard]

DAY 358 - MAY 27, 2010

And thus, it was done. Tomorrow I gotta head out and help Mom pick up a late birthday present for my sister, but I still intend to get my quota done. Tomorrow I have much to write, plus I want to use a systematic approach I came up with to look into my network and find more work for my skills. Should be interesting.

[Matt Willard]

DAY 359 - MAY 28, 2010

Ended up treating my sister to a big birthday meal. Result was that my concentration was killed, so I focused on low impact tasks like scheduling classes, outlining the first episode of my new podcast...things like that. Tomorrow though, it's definitely back to form.

[Matt Willard]

DAY 360 - MAY 29, 2010

Made some poor productivity choices today - gotta keep asking myself if going out to do a task is REALLY worth it and if I can put it off until later. Worked on my column, my magazine article, folded over a planned blog entry into my upcoming podcast, did work on the new format of my formerly-video video game playthrough, and took care of financial junk for college.

Tomorrow it's basically more of the same. Five days left.

[Matt Willard]

DAY 362 - JUNE 1, 2010

Over seven hours of work! I'm surprised - I definitely don't need all of those little breaks if I write for a good while, then switch to other tasks for a few hours. I'm quite pleased. Took care of some college stuff, finished the column, made progress on my magazine article, and did prep work for the new material I'm writing. Not sure how tomorrow's gonna work out - gotta take that debt management course tomorrow that I missed, so we'll see how the rest of the day unfolds.

[Matt Willard]

DAY 363 - JUNE 2, 2010

After the debt management workshop, it really sank in that I need to be better with my finances as well as learning more about sales and marketing. I've made steps to get some other marketing books as well as read some from the library. This took a few hours as I went through every marketing-related book I had and took notes on action steps to take.

Tomorrow I want to polish off that article, begin drafting material, work on the update to Space Quest 5, and begin work on some mini-routines I want to offer through the site.

[Ceoarob]

Originally Posted by Matt Willard

DAY 363 - JUNE 2, 2010

After the debt management workshop, it really sank in that I need to be better with my finances as well as learning more about sales and marketing. I've made steps to get some other marketing books as well as read some from the library. This took a few hours as I went through every marketing-related book I had and took notes on action steps to take.

Tomorrow I want to polish off that article, begin drafting material, work on the update to Space Quest 5, and begin work on some mini-routines I want to offer through the site.

Cheers Matt,

Have you read any of the "Rich Dad" books? I've found them to be extremely helpful in explaining how to spend money.

"action steps" - haha! sounds EXACTLY like a term I would use all the time.

[Matt Willard]

Originally Posted by Ceoarob

Cheers Matt,

Have you read any of the "Rich Dad" books? I've found them to be extremely helpful in explaining how to spend money.

I've heard suspicious things about them. But now I'm realizing how to better approach my money.

[Matt Willard]

DAY 364 - JUNE 4, 2010

Roughly seven hours. Finished off my magazine article, made progress with my new material and worked on the much-late update to Space Quest 5. Tomorrow, an analysis on the past year, and my next steps.

[Ceoarob]

Originally Posted by Matt Willard

I've heard suspicious things about them. But now I'm realizing how to better approach my money.

Yeah, it's solid content. I would recommend his first book "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" and just read from there.

Even if he might be sketchy, he still writes some undeniably solid content.

Originally Posted by Matt Willard

DAY 364 - JUNE 4, 2010

Roughly seven hours. Finished off my magazine article, made progress with my new material and worked on the much-late update to Space Quest 5. Tomorrow, an analysis on the past year, and my next steps.

Woo Hoo, Day 364. Again, I admire your dedication in being able to post every single day for upwards of a year. I've been doing that for me and my personal journal, every night for the past almost year (since August 2009), I've kept a journal of my personal life, thoughts, and reflections.

I'm sure that it has done as many wonders for you as it has for me.

[Matt Willard]

DAY 365 - JUNE 5, 2010

It's been an entire year since I began this journal. Back when I first started, I declared that I was ready to make massive changes - get into college, learn how to drive, and kickstart my freelance writing career.

It, uh...it didn't go that well.

Make no mistake, I have definitely made some progress over the year. These days I'm approaching my freelance writing a lot more intelligently, and now I can see the end of the college application tunnel. But that's not good enough for me. Maybe a perfect freelance career would've been too much to ask for in one year, but I know I could've been in college in the span of a year. I know I could've known how to drive by then. And my writing efforts still would have been massively improved.

In short, I'm nowhere near my original goals. But I'm going to look at this intelligently. WHY, exactly, have I gone so far and done so little?

I think throughout this whole year I greatly overestimated my ability to focus on goals. I kept changing tracks, trying desperately to find a path that garnered results towards what I wanted. I also overestimated my ability to make lasting habit changes. I've failed a lot in that department, enough for me to realize that a different overall tactic is needed.

At this point I feel I need to step back and reassess myself and my overall process for self-improvement. Look at what I did right in the past and learn lessons from it. Only then will I come back and take things a bit slower, mroe gradually, and hopefully more permanent.

I'm still glad I did this, though. I've learned tons of things about myself in the past year, and it was a very enlightening experience. And I'm glad you guys put up with it for a year as I rattled on in this little thread. I really appreciate it.

Dramatics aside, I'm not leaving the forum or anything, but I do think it's time to bring this thread to a close. Thanks for keeping an eye out for me over this past year.

[Ceoarob]

Cheers, you kept to it, that's all that matters.

If you have time, I would do this.

Go back to day Day 1 and write 1 lesson that you learned from that day that you STILL keep with you today. If you have time to do all of them, you'll realize that you learned more than you could ever imagine. Just one thing that you learned so that you could really INTERNALIZE what you've encompassed over the last year.

It's glad to see that you followed through.

-AR