I'm back. Thanks, readers, for indulging me while I took a little time off from writing.
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I've been thinking about this quote a lot recently:
The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago.
The next best time to plant a tree is now.
Unfortunately, I've been agonizing lately over why I didn't start doing certain things earlier in life. I wish, for example, that I had begun compound lifting much, much earlier in my life. My body (at its current age) just doesn't respond all that well to heavy workouts. It takes me days to recover, and after a good workout of deadlifts, squats, pullups and bench presses, I am wiped. Wiped out for the rest of the day. I wish I were fitter and more robust than I am, despite all the effort I put into my fitness.
Sure, there are solutions here. I can do lighter, milder, maintenance-type workouts. I usually feel good after workouts of that level of intensity. But then I'll just be in maintenance mode. That's fine, but in maintenance mode I won't be getting stronger, I won't be growing.
This is one of those examples where I think to myself, "shit, if I had just planted this compound lifting 'tree' twenty years ago, I'd have a real tree now. I'd be much more adapted to lifting at a level that I'd be satisfied with." But I can't go back to twenty years ago and plant that compound lifting tree. I can only plant it today. (Well, technically, I planted it a few years ago, but still.)
I can come up with lots of other examples, sadly: I wish I had taken up drawing or painting earlier in life. I wish I had learned to surf earlier. I wish I had taken up language learning wayyyy earlier--like back when I was still a teenager.
And then, I recall a conversation with a friend of mine who's then-partner told her, "It's too late for me to get started on retirement. I'm too old now to bother to save money." He was just thirty-seven at the time.
Now, let's take a moment and notice the circular logic and self-defeatism of giving up on doing something simply because it's possible you could have started earlier. This should resonate with anyone embracing YMOYL, early retirement or any of the frugality strategies discussed thoughout Casual Kitchen. If your first thought is "it's too late for me" then nothing can ever be worth doing. Tough to go through life like that.
And so here, readers, is where I confess my hypocrisy to you. The complaint about not starting to save money earlier and my complaint about not starting lifting earlier are identical! They are the same.
Of course it's always easier to see flaws and hypocrisies in others than in ourselves, isn't it?
So there's my problem and my challenge--and yours too, if you struggle with the "it's too late" issue anywhere in your life: Get over yourself and plant the tree. Now.
READ NEXT: Good Games
AND: YMOYL: The Full Companion Guide Archive
You can help support the work I do here at Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!
And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!
Showing posts with label goals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label goals. Show all posts
Okay Then, So… When Can I Talk?
All this talk about talking and its role in subverting our actions may have left readers somewhat confused about what they can talk about and when. Heck, I'm confused, and I'm the guy who wrote this stuff in the first place.
Recall that the type of talk we're considering here is the kind that fools our minds' reward centers with "a sense of completion," makes us confuse talk with action, and narcotizes us into apathy and inaction. If we could figure out what kind of talk doesn't do that, that would be awfully helpful.
With that in mind, here are a few general rules for which types of talk you can safely engage in that won't trigger the subversive "sense of completion" loop:
1) You can only talk about actions you have already performed.
a) "Hey, last week I did deadlifts for the first time (and boy are my arms tired!)" (contrast this with "I'm thinking of starting deadlifting" which, as we've seen, produces a sense of completion and therefore prevents you from doing deadlifts)
b) "I did my very first run today, 1.5 miles." (contrast with "I really need to start running.")
c) "I made five new healthy and laughably cheap recipes from Casual Kitchen last month. My grocery bill was down by 45%!" (contrast with "I really should look into ways to cook healthy for less.")
2) You can talk about future tweaks you'd like to make to things you've already done.
"I'm noticing some minor muscle tears all over my rib cage after a few weeks of deadlifting practice. I wonder if adding an occasional cold shower would help my body recover."
3) You can talk about things you don't want to do.
Again, remember: the sense of completion loop means talking about things you want to do makes it more likely you won't do them. Here we simply apply the reverse example, where we use the sense of completion loop on purpose to evade action. Thus, only talk about things if you actually do not want to do them.
A final postscript and disclaimer: Readers, first of all, thanks for being patient with me as I slowly and painstakingly articulate and attempt to solve a challenge I've struggled with, even though it has next to nothing to do with this blog's usual subjects. Second, despite all the prescriptive advice here, please remember that of course you can talk about whatever you want, whenever you want. ;)
*******************
You can help support the work I do here at Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!
And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!
Recall that the type of talk we're considering here is the kind that fools our minds' reward centers with "a sense of completion," makes us confuse talk with action, and narcotizes us into apathy and inaction. If we could figure out what kind of talk doesn't do that, that would be awfully helpful.
With that in mind, here are a few general rules for which types of talk you can safely engage in that won't trigger the subversive "sense of completion" loop:
1) You can only talk about actions you have already performed.
a) "Hey, last week I did deadlifts for the first time (and boy are my arms tired!)" (contrast this with "I'm thinking of starting deadlifting" which, as we've seen, produces a sense of completion and therefore prevents you from doing deadlifts)
b) "I did my very first run today, 1.5 miles." (contrast with "I really need to start running.")
c) "I made five new healthy and laughably cheap recipes from Casual Kitchen last month. My grocery bill was down by 45%!" (contrast with "I really should look into ways to cook healthy for less.")
2) You can talk about future tweaks you'd like to make to things you've already done.
"I'm noticing some minor muscle tears all over my rib cage after a few weeks of deadlifting practice. I wonder if adding an occasional cold shower would help my body recover."
3) You can talk about things you don't want to do.
Again, remember: the sense of completion loop means talking about things you want to do makes it more likely you won't do them. Here we simply apply the reverse example, where we use the sense of completion loop on purpose to evade action. Thus, only talk about things if you actually do not want to do them.
A final postscript and disclaimer: Readers, first of all, thanks for being patient with me as I slowly and painstakingly articulate and attempt to solve a challenge I've struggled with, even though it has next to nothing to do with this blog's usual subjects. Second, despite all the prescriptive advice here, please remember that of course you can talk about whatever you want, whenever you want. ;)
*******************
You can help support the work I do here at Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!
And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!
A 30 Day Experiment with Mini Habits
Today's post returns to the elegant ideas of Stephen Guise, author of Mini Habits and How to Be an Imperfectionist. I wanted to share with readers the results of a month-long experiment I ran to test out the usefulness of mini habits, a cornerstone of Guise's unusually creative approach to personal development.
A quick word on what mini habits actually are--and the best way to describe them is by explaining what they're not. They are not aggressive resolutions like "READ 200 PAGES EVERY DAY!" or "RUN 10 MILES EVERY DAY!!!" or whatever. Those are exactly the kinds of unsustainable goals that don't become habits. They're too hard. They drain your willpower. And you'll resist them and eventually quit on them.
A mini habit operates under completely different incentives. The idea is to make the habit so small, so easy, that you have no resistance whatsoever to doing it. Guise gives his own amusing example of building a surprisingly robust workout habit based on the mini habit of doing one pushup a day. If he does his one pushup, he "worked out."
You might snicker at this at first, but once you think through the psychology of it, you'll realize the sheer elegance and intuitiveness of such a laughably easy goal.
First, put yourself in the place of someone who never was able to make fitness a regular habit, as Stephen Guise was for many years. A "one pushup" mini habit was a device that got him to start doing something. What typically stops us from doing things (and produces procrastination as well as frustration with ourselves) is our resistance to getting started.
This is particularly true if the goal has some enormity to it, like READ 200 PAGES TODAY! Unfortunately, the subtext to a goal like this is: AND IF YOU READ ONLY 199 PAGES YOU ARE A COMPLETE LOSER!
In stark contrast, the mini-goal mechanism lowers the entry fee. The goal is something easy--hilariously easy--to do. And because it gets you started, you sidestep procrastination and inner resistance.
And, all along you have the option to continue or to quit. You can do your one pushup and stop. Or you can do a few more, if you want. Or a lot more. It doesn't matter! You've met your goal already so it's all gravy. It takes away all the pressure.
This totally altered Guise's mental construct of what "working out" meant, and it changed his image of what it meant to build an exercise habit. Moreover, setting the bar so low annihilated his exercise perfectionism which had been a substantial obstacle between him and fitness.
Contrast this with a person who does 80 pushups but feels like a failure because he "failed" in his goal of doing 100. As somebody who tried (a few times) to follow the 100 pushups workout (and for whatever reason I never was able to get much above 70 pushups in a row), this resonates with me. I would do 74 pushups yet feel like a putz because I couldn't do more. Sad! It just goes to show how rubber our yardsticks can be when we measure ourselves.
Note also: It shouldn't be a surprise that under this kind of self-imposed negative reinforcement, I kind of... slipped out of the habit of doing pushups. Which takes us to the key psychological takeaway here: it's impossible to build a healthy and sustainable habit out of something that's a source of failure and frustration.
Okay. Clearly, there are many reasons why the mini habit concept makes intuitive sense. But I still wanted to test it for myself. And what I didn't know was there was yet another gigantic advantage to this seemingly innocuous mental hack. I'll get to it in just a minute.
So, I picked two imperfectionist-friendly mini habits and trialed them both for 30 days, just to see what would happen. My mini habits were:
1) Write for 20 minutes
2) Read 25 pages of any book
The thing is, lately, I haven't been reading as much nor writing as much as I would like. Entire days would go by where I wouldn't write at all, and I'd often go a day or two not really reading much in the form of long-form works--like books that really teach you and change your thinking in ways short-form reading cannot.
I wasn't satisfied with this. At all. There's so much to learn, so many insights to gain out there... and yet I seemed to be passively letting myself waste time consuming useless information like the news, or peoples' political rants on Facebook.
So, I set goals that, for me, were the equivalent of "do one pushup." After I reached them, I'd permit myself the freedom to stop, yet grant myself the success of having met my goal and taken a small step forward.
I'm guessing readers conversant in the psychology of goal setting already know where this is going.
Had I merely met the laughably easy minimums for each day, over 30 days I should have read approximately 750 pages (30 days x 25 pages) and I should have written for about 600 minutes, or 10 hours (30 days x 20 minutes). This is nothing to be ashamed of: it's actually quite a decent amount of reading and writing.
But what actually happened was I read a grand total of 1,195 pages and wrote for about 1,200 minutes. I exceeded the reading mini habit by some 60% and crushed the writing goal by 100%. More importantly, it felt easy. Weirdly easy. A lot easier than I expected.
We mentioned before the central idea that these mini habits served to get me to sit down and start. In both domains, reading and writing, it often got me into a groove, but not always. Some of those brief writing sessions ended the minute the timer went off: I wasn't feeling it so I quit. But that was okay too: I met my minimum, so I was cool with it. I didn't castigate myself. (Side-benefit: no negative reinforcement!)
On some days however, I kept going. Sometimes, while writing, I never even heard the timer go off as I slipped effortlessly into a glorious flow state. Interestingly, I never knew which type of day it was going to be until I sat down and started. Which meant there was a strong positive incentive to try each and every day.
The same thing happened with reading: many of the days I read just the minimum, and that was okay. But on other days I'd get engrossed and read double, triple or even five times that minimum page count. And once again, I never knew which day was going to be which.
This was an unmitigated success, and I recommend to readers to try out their own mini habits in domains they wish to explore. Who wouldn't want to easily fit 20 hours of writing and the reading of some 5-6 books into a given month, and have it feel easy? These mini goals, they really work.
A quick word on what mini habits actually are--and the best way to describe them is by explaining what they're not. They are not aggressive resolutions like "READ 200 PAGES EVERY DAY!" or "RUN 10 MILES EVERY DAY!!!" or whatever. Those are exactly the kinds of unsustainable goals that don't become habits. They're too hard. They drain your willpower. And you'll resist them and eventually quit on them.
A mini habit operates under completely different incentives. The idea is to make the habit so small, so easy, that you have no resistance whatsoever to doing it. Guise gives his own amusing example of building a surprisingly robust workout habit based on the mini habit of doing one pushup a day. If he does his one pushup, he "worked out."
You might snicker at this at first, but once you think through the psychology of it, you'll realize the sheer elegance and intuitiveness of such a laughably easy goal.
First, put yourself in the place of someone who never was able to make fitness a regular habit, as Stephen Guise was for many years. A "one pushup" mini habit was a device that got him to start doing something. What typically stops us from doing things (and produces procrastination as well as frustration with ourselves) is our resistance to getting started.
This is particularly true if the goal has some enormity to it, like READ 200 PAGES TODAY! Unfortunately, the subtext to a goal like this is: AND IF YOU READ ONLY 199 PAGES YOU ARE A COMPLETE LOSER!
In stark contrast, the mini-goal mechanism lowers the entry fee. The goal is something easy--hilariously easy--to do. And because it gets you started, you sidestep procrastination and inner resistance.
And, all along you have the option to continue or to quit. You can do your one pushup and stop. Or you can do a few more, if you want. Or a lot more. It doesn't matter! You've met your goal already so it's all gravy. It takes away all the pressure.
This totally altered Guise's mental construct of what "working out" meant, and it changed his image of what it meant to build an exercise habit. Moreover, setting the bar so low annihilated his exercise perfectionism which had been a substantial obstacle between him and fitness.
Contrast this with a person who does 80 pushups but feels like a failure because he "failed" in his goal of doing 100. As somebody who tried (a few times) to follow the 100 pushups workout (and for whatever reason I never was able to get much above 70 pushups in a row), this resonates with me. I would do 74 pushups yet feel like a putz because I couldn't do more. Sad! It just goes to show how rubber our yardsticks can be when we measure ourselves.
Note also: It shouldn't be a surprise that under this kind of self-imposed negative reinforcement, I kind of... slipped out of the habit of doing pushups. Which takes us to the key psychological takeaway here: it's impossible to build a healthy and sustainable habit out of something that's a source of failure and frustration.
Okay. Clearly, there are many reasons why the mini habit concept makes intuitive sense. But I still wanted to test it for myself. And what I didn't know was there was yet another gigantic advantage to this seemingly innocuous mental hack. I'll get to it in just a minute.
So, I picked two imperfectionist-friendly mini habits and trialed them both for 30 days, just to see what would happen. My mini habits were:
1) Write for 20 minutes
2) Read 25 pages of any book
The thing is, lately, I haven't been reading as much nor writing as much as I would like. Entire days would go by where I wouldn't write at all, and I'd often go a day or two not really reading much in the form of long-form works--like books that really teach you and change your thinking in ways short-form reading cannot.
I wasn't satisfied with this. At all. There's so much to learn, so many insights to gain out there... and yet I seemed to be passively letting myself waste time consuming useless information like the news, or peoples' political rants on Facebook.
So, I set goals that, for me, were the equivalent of "do one pushup." After I reached them, I'd permit myself the freedom to stop, yet grant myself the success of having met my goal and taken a small step forward.
I'm guessing readers conversant in the psychology of goal setting already know where this is going.
Had I merely met the laughably easy minimums for each day, over 30 days I should have read approximately 750 pages (30 days x 25 pages) and I should have written for about 600 minutes, or 10 hours (30 days x 20 minutes). This is nothing to be ashamed of: it's actually quite a decent amount of reading and writing.
But what actually happened was I read a grand total of 1,195 pages and wrote for about 1,200 minutes. I exceeded the reading mini habit by some 60% and crushed the writing goal by 100%. More importantly, it felt easy. Weirdly easy. A lot easier than I expected.
We mentioned before the central idea that these mini habits served to get me to sit down and start. In both domains, reading and writing, it often got me into a groove, but not always. Some of those brief writing sessions ended the minute the timer went off: I wasn't feeling it so I quit. But that was okay too: I met my minimum, so I was cool with it. I didn't castigate myself. (Side-benefit: no negative reinforcement!)
On some days however, I kept going. Sometimes, while writing, I never even heard the timer go off as I slipped effortlessly into a glorious flow state. Interestingly, I never knew which type of day it was going to be until I sat down and started. Which meant there was a strong positive incentive to try each and every day.
The same thing happened with reading: many of the days I read just the minimum, and that was okay. But on other days I'd get engrossed and read double, triple or even five times that minimum page count. And once again, I never knew which day was going to be which.
This was an unmitigated success, and I recommend to readers to try out their own mini habits in domains they wish to explore. Who wouldn't want to easily fit 20 hours of writing and the reading of some 5-6 books into a given month, and have it feel easy? These mini goals, they really work.
Minimum Viable Progress
Have a quick look at this quote from Greg McKeown’s exceptional book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less:
A popular idea in Silicon Valley is "Done is better than perfect." The sentiment is not that we should produce rubbish. The idea, as I read it, is not to waste time on nonessentials and just to get the thing done. In entrepreneurial circles the idea is expressed as creating a "minimal viable product." The idea is, "What is the simplest possible product that that will be useful and valuable to the intended customer?"
Similarly, we can adopt a method of "minimal viable progress." We can ask ourselves, "What is the smallest amount of progress that will be useful and valuable to the essential task we are trying to get done?"
This quote resonates with me right now because some of the "essential tasks" I'd like to accomplish this year are kind of... vague. I'm finding it a bit difficult to convert them into clear steps toward specific, measurable goals.
Here's an example concerning my work here at Casual Kitchen:
Goal for 2015:
* I want to learn more new recipes and share them with readers
Anyone who knows anything about proper goal construction knows that this "goal" blows. It's vague. It's non-specific. There's nothing to measure or quantify. These are all goal-setting no-nos.
What would happen, then, if we took this vague, suckola goal and brainstormed one or two possible minimum viable progress steps?
Possible Minimum Viable Progress Steps Towards Vague Suckola Goal
* Learn and cook a new recipe this week
* Cook four new recipes during the month of February
Suddenly things look a lot more measurable and specific, don't they? These are two well-crafted mini-goals that will take me in the direction I want to go. They're pretty easy too.
In simplest terms, then, a good minimum viable progress step should be a small and relatively easy win, and it should be a quantifiable step towards your general, larger goal.
One more thought... an intriguing one. It really isn't all that much to ask to cook one new recipe per week, or--slightly easier--four new recipes a month. If I maintain that pace, I'll have cooked forty-four new recipes by year end. That's darn impressive. These small, easy wins can really add up.
Another example. Laura is captivated by foreign languages, particularly French and Spanish. But "Learn French" is, you guessed it, yet another vague, suckola goal. It's also such a big goal that it can intimidate you out of taking any action at all.
So Laura outwitted her fears and created her own unit of minimum viable progress: spend a mere 30 minutes a day working on her French. She's also making it easy on herself by interpreting "working on French" as broadly as possible to keep the process fun and fresh: One day she might read aloud, another day she might work on grammar, and another day she might have a conversation with a French speaking friend. Heck, one of the most unexpected things we discovered while learning Spanish was it doesn't really matter all that much what she does. The point is rather to build a daily habit of spending time thinking in another language.
And if she sticks to this goal, by the end of 2015 she'll have put more than 180 hours towards language learning. Once again: it really adds up.
One last example: I'm partway through writing a book manuscript based on my Quick Writing Tips blog. But this manuscript has been sitting on my laptop, half-done, for nearly a year now, mainly because my goal, "Write Writing Tips Book" is yet another suckola goal. It's too big. There are no intermediate steps to help me along. Worst of all, I'm afraid of this goal.
Is it a surprise that I haven't been working on it?
So, I've made a choice to define my own minimum viable progress step: spend 30 minutes per day working on the manuscript. That's it. Small, easy, quantifiable and habit-based, just like Laura's daily language practice.
What are some other challenging life domains where we can apply the concept of "minimum viable progress"?
1) Weight loss
2) Fitness goals
3) Saving money/personal investing
4) Social skills/relationships
What might be examples of reasonably easy minimum viable progress steps for the domains above? How about:
1) Eat a healthy, low-carb breakfast every day this month.
2) Exercise 30 minutes three times this week.
3) Preschedule four quarterly conference calls with a fee-only financial planner in April, July, October and next January.
4) Strike up a conversation with one new person per day over the next week.
Readers, let's talk about you now. What are the goals you're working on, and what could be useful examples of minimum viable progress towards those goals? Share your thoughts in the comments!
Read Next: Things Are Important Before They're Important
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
Easy. Do all your shopping at Amazon.com
via the links on this site! You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.
A popular idea in Silicon Valley is "Done is better than perfect." The sentiment is not that we should produce rubbish. The idea, as I read it, is not to waste time on nonessentials and just to get the thing done. In entrepreneurial circles the idea is expressed as creating a "minimal viable product." The idea is, "What is the simplest possible product that that will be useful and valuable to the intended customer?"
Similarly, we can adopt a method of "minimal viable progress." We can ask ourselves, "What is the smallest amount of progress that will be useful and valuable to the essential task we are trying to get done?"
This quote resonates with me right now because some of the "essential tasks" I'd like to accomplish this year are kind of... vague. I'm finding it a bit difficult to convert them into clear steps toward specific, measurable goals.
Here's an example concerning my work here at Casual Kitchen:
Goal for 2015:
* I want to learn more new recipes and share them with readers
Anyone who knows anything about proper goal construction knows that this "goal" blows. It's vague. It's non-specific. There's nothing to measure or quantify. These are all goal-setting no-nos.
What would happen, then, if we took this vague, suckola goal and brainstormed one or two possible minimum viable progress steps?
Possible Minimum Viable Progress Steps Towards Vague Suckola Goal
* Learn and cook a new recipe this week
* Cook four new recipes during the month of February
Suddenly things look a lot more measurable and specific, don't they? These are two well-crafted mini-goals that will take me in the direction I want to go. They're pretty easy too.
In simplest terms, then, a good minimum viable progress step should be a small and relatively easy win, and it should be a quantifiable step towards your general, larger goal.
One more thought... an intriguing one. It really isn't all that much to ask to cook one new recipe per week, or--slightly easier--four new recipes a month. If I maintain that pace, I'll have cooked forty-four new recipes by year end. That's darn impressive. These small, easy wins can really add up.
Another example. Laura is captivated by foreign languages, particularly French and Spanish. But "Learn French" is, you guessed it, yet another vague, suckola goal. It's also such a big goal that it can intimidate you out of taking any action at all.
So Laura outwitted her fears and created her own unit of minimum viable progress: spend a mere 30 minutes a day working on her French. She's also making it easy on herself by interpreting "working on French" as broadly as possible to keep the process fun and fresh: One day she might read aloud, another day she might work on grammar, and another day she might have a conversation with a French speaking friend. Heck, one of the most unexpected things we discovered while learning Spanish was it doesn't really matter all that much what she does. The point is rather to build a daily habit of spending time thinking in another language.
And if she sticks to this goal, by the end of 2015 she'll have put more than 180 hours towards language learning. Once again: it really adds up.
One last example: I'm partway through writing a book manuscript based on my Quick Writing Tips blog. But this manuscript has been sitting on my laptop, half-done, for nearly a year now, mainly because my goal, "Write Writing Tips Book" is yet another suckola goal. It's too big. There are no intermediate steps to help me along. Worst of all, I'm afraid of this goal.
Is it a surprise that I haven't been working on it?
So, I've made a choice to define my own minimum viable progress step: spend 30 minutes per day working on the manuscript. That's it. Small, easy, quantifiable and habit-based, just like Laura's daily language practice.
What are some other challenging life domains where we can apply the concept of "minimum viable progress"?
1) Weight loss
2) Fitness goals
3) Saving money/personal investing
4) Social skills/relationships
What might be examples of reasonably easy minimum viable progress steps for the domains above? How about:
1) Eat a healthy, low-carb breakfast every day this month.
2) Exercise 30 minutes three times this week.
3) Preschedule four quarterly conference calls with a fee-only financial planner in April, July, October and next January.
4) Strike up a conversation with one new person per day over the next week.
Readers, let's talk about you now. What are the goals you're working on, and what could be useful examples of minimum viable progress towards those goals? Share your thoughts in the comments!
Read Next: Things Are Important Before They're Important
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
Easy. Do all your shopping at Amazon.com
via the links on this site! You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.
Why Do My New Year's Resolutions Always Fail By Mid-May?
I stole this image from a friend's Facebook page:
Hilarious. Seriously, who hasn't done this with their New Year's resolutions?
Then again, maybe this photo hits a little too close to home, especially if your resolutions for this year are already beginning to slip away. So let's set aside the humor for a moment and ask a serious question: What is it about the goals in the photo above that caused repeated failure, and how can we avoid failure like this? What can we do to ensure we select effective goals we will actually achieve?
I'd love to hear you share below what types of goals work for you. Here are a few of my thoughts:
Be specific.
An effective goal is specific. To see what not to do, look at the first two resolutions above. "Lose (more) weight" and "get fit" aren't goals--they are shapeless generalizations.
If you're setting a goal, and if you actually want to achieve that goal, it must be clear, defined and precise. So how can we change vague, failure-bound resolutions like "lose weight" and "get fit" into something that has a snowball's chance of working?
With body weight, start by defining a specific goal weight or a specific weight loss target: Lose 20 pounds, or Get my body weight to X. [Special note: read this post on the dangers of depending too much on body weight as a health indicator]. With fitness, use a specific and sensible parameter that's a meaningful measure of fitness to you:
Run two miles without having to stop.
Do forty pushups in under two minutes.
Exercise twice a week for a minimum of 30 minutes.
However, being specific isn't enough. You need one more element to make an effective goal.
Include a specific time horizon.
Effective goals have end dates. A goal with a proper time horizon and proper specificity would be something like:
By December 31, 2013, I will weigh X, 25 pounds less than my current weight.
By December 31, 2013, I'll be able to run 3 miles in under 36 minutes.
By December 31, 2013, I will have saved $5,000 in an emergency fund.
Even better, consider mapping out intermediary steps on the way to your end goal:
By June 30, I will have lost 15 pounds on my way to losing 25 pounds by Dec 31.
By June 30, I will run 2m in 30 minutes; by September 30, I will run 3m in 40 minutes.
By March 30, I will save $1,250 in an emergency fund (1/4 of my goal). By June 30 I will save $2,500. By September 30 I will save $3,750.
And so on. Divide up the goal so it makes sense to you, either by breaking up both the year and goal into exactly equal parts, or by front-loading the goal (if you front-load a goal--in other words, if you do more than half of it in the first half of the year--things get easier as the year goes on). A front-loaded version of the Save $5,000 in an emergency fund goal might look like this:
By March 30, I will save $2,000 in an emergency fund (40% of my goal). By June 30 I will save $3,500 (70%). By September 30 I will save $4,500 (90%!).
By June, you can already look back proudly on what you've done. By September you can coast! Revel in your goal-conquering awesomeness.
Remember: by the time March or April rolls around, most people have already given up on their New Year's resolutions. You, on the other hand, have set up a process and a roadmap--and you're systematically and relentlessly accomplishing steps towards your goals.
Fewer = better.
With all due respect, the poor person who wrote the list of goals above needs to know a central truth about goal setting: Six goals is too many. Three would be better. Maybe four. And keep in mind: there's absolutely nothing wrong with setting just one goal--especially if it's an important and meaningful goal.
It's easy for modern humans to fall in love with lists. It feels good to put down, in writing, lots of things that you'd like to do. It shows how serious you are about self-improvement.
That's all fine and good, but we're not making lists. We're accomplishing goals. There's a gigantic difference.
The more you focus your attention and your will on a small number of extremely well-defined goals, the more likely you'll achieve them. It's okay if you save back a few goals for next year, or even the year after that. It's far better to achieve two or three of your most important goals now than it is to write down six or seven goals and achieve none.
We're almost done. There's just one more step to take. A critical step. And it will guarantee that you accomplish your goal.
Consequences.
The most important element of effective goal-setting is this: set a specific consequence if you fail. All the better if you set up a consequence that you'll do anything to avoid. (Protip: make the goal--and the consequences--public.)
Here's an example that resonates with me in a way that I'd... well, in a way that I'd rather not explain:
I will save $5,000 in an emergency fund by December 31, or I will sing the theme song to "Titanic" in a Karaoke bar, and then post the video on Facebook for all my friends to see.
Congratulations. You've mindfully and consciously set up conditions that are utterly congruent with your success. You will not fail.
Here's the tl;dr version of today's post: Good goals...
...Are specific
...Have a time horizon
...Are focused and few in number
...Have clear consequences for failure
One last thought. Reading a post on how to set goals is not the same as achieving goals. Time to get to work.
Readers, what additional thoughts would you add?
Related Posts:
Ask CK: The Two-A-Day Workout
Eat Less, Exercise More Doesn't Work. Wait, What?
Becoming a Knowledgeable and Sophisticated Investor: Six Tips
Two People, Fifteen Days, Thirty Meals. Thirty-Five Bucks!
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
For those readers interested in supporting Casual Kitchen, the easiest way is to do so is to do all your shopping at Amazon.com via the links on this site. You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.
Hilarious. Seriously, who hasn't done this with their New Year's resolutions?
Then again, maybe this photo hits a little too close to home, especially if your resolutions for this year are already beginning to slip away. So let's set aside the humor for a moment and ask a serious question: What is it about the goals in the photo above that caused repeated failure, and how can we avoid failure like this? What can we do to ensure we select effective goals we will actually achieve?
I'd love to hear you share below what types of goals work for you. Here are a few of my thoughts:
Be specific.
An effective goal is specific. To see what not to do, look at the first two resolutions above. "Lose (more) weight" and "get fit" aren't goals--they are shapeless generalizations.
If you're setting a goal, and if you actually want to achieve that goal, it must be clear, defined and precise. So how can we change vague, failure-bound resolutions like "lose weight" and "get fit" into something that has a snowball's chance of working?
With body weight, start by defining a specific goal weight or a specific weight loss target: Lose 20 pounds, or Get my body weight to X. [Special note: read this post on the dangers of depending too much on body weight as a health indicator]. With fitness, use a specific and sensible parameter that's a meaningful measure of fitness to you:
Run two miles without having to stop.
Do forty pushups in under two minutes.
Exercise twice a week for a minimum of 30 minutes.
However, being specific isn't enough. You need one more element to make an effective goal.
Include a specific time horizon.
Effective goals have end dates. A goal with a proper time horizon and proper specificity would be something like:
By December 31, 2013, I will weigh X, 25 pounds less than my current weight.
By December 31, 2013, I'll be able to run 3 miles in under 36 minutes.
By December 31, 2013, I will have saved $5,000 in an emergency fund.
Even better, consider mapping out intermediary steps on the way to your end goal:
By June 30, I will have lost 15 pounds on my way to losing 25 pounds by Dec 31.
By June 30, I will run 2m in 30 minutes; by September 30, I will run 3m in 40 minutes.
By March 30, I will save $1,250 in an emergency fund (1/4 of my goal). By June 30 I will save $2,500. By September 30 I will save $3,750.
And so on. Divide up the goal so it makes sense to you, either by breaking up both the year and goal into exactly equal parts, or by front-loading the goal (if you front-load a goal--in other words, if you do more than half of it in the first half of the year--things get easier as the year goes on). A front-loaded version of the Save $5,000 in an emergency fund goal might look like this:
By March 30, I will save $2,000 in an emergency fund (40% of my goal). By June 30 I will save $3,500 (70%). By September 30 I will save $4,500 (90%!).
By June, you can already look back proudly on what you've done. By September you can coast! Revel in your goal-conquering awesomeness.
Remember: by the time March or April rolls around, most people have already given up on their New Year's resolutions. You, on the other hand, have set up a process and a roadmap--and you're systematically and relentlessly accomplishing steps towards your goals.
Fewer = better.
With all due respect, the poor person who wrote the list of goals above needs to know a central truth about goal setting: Six goals is too many. Three would be better. Maybe four. And keep in mind: there's absolutely nothing wrong with setting just one goal--especially if it's an important and meaningful goal.
It's easy for modern humans to fall in love with lists. It feels good to put down, in writing, lots of things that you'd like to do. It shows how serious you are about self-improvement.
That's all fine and good, but we're not making lists. We're accomplishing goals. There's a gigantic difference.
The more you focus your attention and your will on a small number of extremely well-defined goals, the more likely you'll achieve them. It's okay if you save back a few goals for next year, or even the year after that. It's far better to achieve two or three of your most important goals now than it is to write down six or seven goals and achieve none.
We're almost done. There's just one more step to take. A critical step. And it will guarantee that you accomplish your goal.
Consequences.
The most important element of effective goal-setting is this: set a specific consequence if you fail. All the better if you set up a consequence that you'll do anything to avoid. (Protip: make the goal--and the consequences--public.)
Here's an example that resonates with me in a way that I'd... well, in a way that I'd rather not explain:
I will save $5,000 in an emergency fund by December 31, or I will sing the theme song to "Titanic" in a Karaoke bar, and then post the video on Facebook for all my friends to see.
Congratulations. You've mindfully and consciously set up conditions that are utterly congruent with your success. You will not fail.
Here's the tl;dr version of today's post: Good goals...
...Are specific
...Have a time horizon
...Are focused and few in number
...Have clear consequences for failure
One last thought. Reading a post on how to set goals is not the same as achieving goals. Time to get to work.
Readers, what additional thoughts would you add?
Related Posts:
Ask CK: The Two-A-Day Workout
Eat Less, Exercise More Doesn't Work. Wait, What?
Becoming a Knowledgeable and Sophisticated Investor: Six Tips
Two People, Fifteen Days, Thirty Meals. Thirty-Five Bucks!
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
For those readers interested in supporting Casual Kitchen, the easiest way is to do so is to do all your shopping at Amazon.com
via the links on this site. You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.
My Goals For Casual Kitchen For 2013
Leave it to me to share my 2013 blogging goals in late January, but today I'd like to share with readers my plans for CK for the coming year.
1) Increase income
CK earns a couple hundred bucks a month in a good month. Frankly, I haven't concentrated all that much on maximizing what I earn here. This year, however, I want to grow both readership and revenues, and by year end I'd like to scale up my income at CK to a nice, round $500 a month.
My entire body of work (nearly 900 posts, including well over a hundred recipes) is available completely free to readers. And while CK earns the bulk of its income from advertising (mostly from Google's Adsense program), one thing I've encouraged readers to do in the past several months is to do more of your Amazon shopping via the affiliate links here at CK. Hey, if you're going to purchase something you need at Amazon anyway, why not use the links here to support my writing too--at no incremental cost to you? Over the past few months my Amazon affiliate income has become much more significant, and I thank readers for using this avenue to support my work.
2) More recipes
Last year I wrote about branding, consumerism, the advertising-consumption cycle and dietary philosophy. I also dedicated a ton of pixels to the Your Money Or Your Life series. This blog stepped into a lot of controversial subjects.
This year, I also want to get back to Casual Kitchen's roots: Really easy, really good and really low-cost recipes. Last week's Minestrone Soup was just the first of several new, laughably cheap recipes I'll publish this year. Stay tuned.
3) Post less
Here's my final goal--and yes, you read that right: I want to post less. Uhhh, this month notwithstanding.
Why? Well, first, I'd like to free up a bit more time for other projects. One is an investment guidebook that's been on my back burner for more than a year now--I want to do some serious work on it in 2013 and see if it amounts to anything. I also want to continue learning French: I had the great fortune to spend November of last year studying at an exceptional language school in Montreal, and I'll head back for still more classes later this year... once the temperature rises above zero kelvin up there.
Most importantly, however, I want to keep giving readers better and better quality articles. And after tweaking my writing and publishing schedule here over the years, I've found that my article quality goes way, way up if I do two things: keep a few weeks' worth of articles "in the can" at all times, and stick to a (mostly) once-a-week posting schedule.
I'll still run a bonus post on occasion (like today), but this year I intend to stick to a more predictable, every-single-Tuesday schedule. With luck, I'll keep improving the quality and value of what you read here.
One last thought: I'm considering reducing the number of Friday Links posts I run to perhaps every other week, or a couple of times a month. (I'd love reader feedback on this by the way: what do you think?) In the coming weeks I may skip a Friday links post here and there and see if there's any reaction, either positive or negative, from readers.
Readers, what are YOUR goals in 2013 for YOUR blog? Share them!
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
For those readers interested in supporting Casual Kitchen, the easiest way is to do so is to do all your shopping at Amazon.com via the links on this site. You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.
1) Increase income
CK earns a couple hundred bucks a month in a good month. Frankly, I haven't concentrated all that much on maximizing what I earn here. This year, however, I want to grow both readership and revenues, and by year end I'd like to scale up my income at CK to a nice, round $500 a month.
My entire body of work (nearly 900 posts, including well over a hundred recipes) is available completely free to readers. And while CK earns the bulk of its income from advertising (mostly from Google's Adsense program), one thing I've encouraged readers to do in the past several months is to do more of your Amazon shopping via the affiliate links here at CK.
Hey, if you're going to purchase something you need at Amazon anyway, why not use the links here to support my writing too--at no incremental cost to you? Over the past few months my Amazon affiliate income has become much more significant, and I thank readers for using this avenue to support my work.2) More recipes
Last year I wrote about branding, consumerism, the advertising-consumption cycle and dietary philosophy. I also dedicated a ton of pixels to the Your Money Or Your Life series. This blog stepped into a lot of controversial subjects.
This year, I also want to get back to Casual Kitchen's roots: Really easy, really good and really low-cost recipes. Last week's Minestrone Soup was just the first of several new, laughably cheap recipes I'll publish this year. Stay tuned.
3) Post less
Here's my final goal--and yes, you read that right: I want to post less. Uhhh, this month notwithstanding.
Why? Well, first, I'd like to free up a bit more time for other projects. One is an investment guidebook that's been on my back burner for more than a year now--I want to do some serious work on it in 2013 and see if it amounts to anything. I also want to continue learning French: I had the great fortune to spend November of last year studying at an exceptional language school in Montreal, and I'll head back for still more classes later this year... once the temperature rises above zero kelvin up there.
Most importantly, however, I want to keep giving readers better and better quality articles. And after tweaking my writing and publishing schedule here over the years, I've found that my article quality goes way, way up if I do two things: keep a few weeks' worth of articles "in the can" at all times, and stick to a (mostly) once-a-week posting schedule.
I'll still run a bonus post on occasion (like today), but this year I intend to stick to a more predictable, every-single-Tuesday schedule. With luck, I'll keep improving the quality and value of what you read here.
One last thought: I'm considering reducing the number of Friday Links posts I run to perhaps every other week, or a couple of times a month. (I'd love reader feedback on this by the way: what do you think?) In the coming weeks I may skip a Friday links post here and there and see if there's any reaction, either positive or negative, from readers.
Readers, what are YOUR goals in 2013 for YOUR blog? Share them!
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
For those readers interested in supporting Casual Kitchen, the easiest way is to do so is to do all your shopping at Amazon.com
via the links on this site. You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.
A Tale of Two Breakfasts
The two breakfasts in the above photo took about the same amount of time to make--about five minutes. They'll take about the same time to eat, another five minutes.
Both meals are roughly equal in volume and have similar satiety factors, which means you could eat either one and feel equally full for about the same length of time.
Yet one breakfast has nearly three times the calories of the other. Betcha can't guess which.
And, for those of you still clinging to the ludicrous notion that healthy food has to cost more than unhealthy food, guess which meal costs less?
Uh-huh. That bowl of oatmeal costs about 20c to make, less than one fourth of the 90c-$1.00 cost of the eggs and sausage.
Goals
Why am I talking about this? Because these two radically different breakfasts serve completely different goals.
Laura loves sausage and eggs, probably even more than I do. She could easily wolf down that higher-calorie breakfast and hardly think twice about it. But her long-term goals are to get her cholesterol numbers down and get more fit. Oatmeal is a food she likes that helps her reach those goals.
My goal, on the other hand, is to have a heart attack by age 47.
Just checking to see if you were paying attention! Seriously, my goal is to rebuild my body during a period of heavy distance running, so I temporarily need to increase the protein and fat content of my diet.
Two totally different meals, two totally different diet and health goals.
What goals will you support with your next meal?
Related Posts:
Make Your Diet Into a Flexible Tool
15 Creative Tips to Avoid Holiday Overeating
What to Eat When You're Sick as a Dog
The "It's Too Expensive to Eat Healthy Food" Debate
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com
via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!
My 2009 Cooking, Food and Diet Goals
There's no better way to prod yourself to reach your goals than to state them in a public forum, so today I'm going to share my 2009 food-related goals with you.
There are only five goals on this list: enough to be a challenge, but not enough to overwhelm. With any luck, pursuing these goals will generate even more of the insights, cooking tips and easy, low-cost recipes I try to bring to you here at Casual Kitchen. And that, I hope, will improve Casual Kitchen's value to you.
Readers--what cooking, eating and blogging goals have you set for yourself for 2009?
***************************
Casual Kitchen's 2009 Food Goals:
1) Learn to Bake Bread:
I've been talking about this for long enough--now is the time for action. My goal is to get competent at making at least a few different types of yeast-based breads over the course of 2009. Perhaps 2009 will be my year in bread.
2) Tackle Indian Cuisine:
Laura and I have already dipped our collective toe into Indian cooking, and I've already posted a mini-blogroll of easy Indian cooking sites (which has since grown into a much larger blogroll that I hope to share in a separate post in the coming weeks). But 2009 is going to be the year we dive into this cuisine in earnest.
3) Learn Hawaiian Cuisine:
We're going to be in Hawaii for a total of about four months in 2009 (it's kind of an extended vacation/sabbatical for both of us), and hopefully this will give me the opportunity to learn as much as I can about the cuisine of the USA's 50th state.
4) Increase Exploration of Partial Vegetarianism:
I love to focus on vegetarian meals here at Casual Kitchen because so many of the best recipes are both cheaper and healthier than meat-based meals. I intend to find, cook and post many more recipes of this sort in 2009.
5) Explore Raw Foodism:
I'm extremely curious about the raw foods movement, its potential health implications, and to what extent raw food can be a fundamental part of a diet for those of us who might be cooking on a budget. I don't see myself converting to raw foods entirely, but I plan to increase the percentage of raw foods in my diet in 2009. If my efforts yield any interesting blog posts, you'll be the second to know!
Related Posts:
Six Secrets to Save You from Cooking Burnout
The Pros and Cons of a High-Carb/Low-Fat Diet
Three Strategies to Create Space in Your Kitchen
Top Ten Most Popular Posts of Casual Kitchen
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by linking to me, subscribing to my RSS feed, or submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon.
There are only five goals on this list: enough to be a challenge, but not enough to overwhelm. With any luck, pursuing these goals will generate even more of the insights, cooking tips and easy, low-cost recipes I try to bring to you here at Casual Kitchen. And that, I hope, will improve Casual Kitchen's value to you.
Readers--what cooking, eating and blogging goals have you set for yourself for 2009?
***************************
Casual Kitchen's 2009 Food Goals:
1) Learn to Bake Bread:
I've been talking about this for long enough--now is the time for action. My goal is to get competent at making at least a few different types of yeast-based breads over the course of 2009. Perhaps 2009 will be my year in bread.
2) Tackle Indian Cuisine:
Laura and I have already dipped our collective toe into Indian cooking, and I've already posted a mini-blogroll of easy Indian cooking sites (which has since grown into a much larger blogroll that I hope to share in a separate post in the coming weeks). But 2009 is going to be the year we dive into this cuisine in earnest.
3) Learn Hawaiian Cuisine:
We're going to be in Hawaii for a total of about four months in 2009 (it's kind of an extended vacation/sabbatical for both of us), and hopefully this will give me the opportunity to learn as much as I can about the cuisine of the USA's 50th state.
4) Increase Exploration of Partial Vegetarianism:
I love to focus on vegetarian meals here at Casual Kitchen because so many of the best recipes are both cheaper and healthier than meat-based meals. I intend to find, cook and post many more recipes of this sort in 2009.
5) Explore Raw Foodism:
I'm extremely curious about the raw foods movement, its potential health implications, and to what extent raw food can be a fundamental part of a diet for those of us who might be cooking on a budget. I don't see myself converting to raw foods entirely, but I plan to increase the percentage of raw foods in my diet in 2009. If my efforts yield any interesting blog posts, you'll be the second to know!
Related Posts:
Six Secrets to Save You from Cooking Burnout
The Pros and Cons of a High-Carb/Low-Fat Diet
Three Strategies to Create Space in Your Kitchen
Top Ten Most Popular Posts of Casual Kitchen
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by linking to me, subscribing to my RSS feed, or submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon.
Blog Improvement 101: CK Food Links--Friday December 19, 2008
Today's links post is ten of the best articles on blogging that I've found over the past year. I find myself referring to many of these articles repeatedly in my efforts to improve Casual Kitchen.
Hey, New Year's is only a couple of weeks away--what are your plans and goals for making your blog even better in 2009?
1) 50 Ways to Take Your Blog to the Next Level from Chrisbrogan.com
2) 20 Types of Pages that Every Blogger Should Consider from Problogger (I particularly liked the "sneeze page")
3) Eight Steps to a More Professional Blogspot Blog from Downloadsquad
4) SEO: Metrics that Matter from Practical eCommerce
5) 10 Mistakes that Could be Killing Your Blog from Write to Done
6) Seven Ways to Help Your Blogging Friends from The Simple Dollar
7) How to Build a High-Traffic Blog from Stevepavlina.com
8) How to Create Real Value from Stevepavlina.com
9) Nine Ways to Jumpstart Your Writing Goal from Dumb Little Man
10) Seven Can't-Miss Ways to Kick-Start the Writing Habit from Freelance Folder
Readers, are there any other articles that I've missed that you think are worth sharing?
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by linking to me, subscribing to my RSS feed, or submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon.
Hey, New Year's is only a couple of weeks away--what are your plans and goals for making your blog even better in 2009?
1) 50 Ways to Take Your Blog to the Next Level from Chrisbrogan.com
2) 20 Types of Pages that Every Blogger Should Consider from Problogger (I particularly liked the "sneeze page")
3) Eight Steps to a More Professional Blogspot Blog from Downloadsquad
4) SEO: Metrics that Matter from Practical eCommerce
5) 10 Mistakes that Could be Killing Your Blog from Write to Done
6) Seven Ways to Help Your Blogging Friends from The Simple Dollar
7) How to Build a High-Traffic Blog from Stevepavlina.com
8) How to Create Real Value from Stevepavlina.com
9) Nine Ways to Jumpstart Your Writing Goal from Dumb Little Man
10) Seven Can't-Miss Ways to Kick-Start the Writing Habit from Freelance Folder
Readers, are there any other articles that I've missed that you think are worth sharing?
How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by linking to me, subscribing to my RSS feed, or submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon.
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