Peter Armstrong

If I blog these then I have more pressure to stick to them, so here I go.  Yes, this is a more self-centered post than usual, but it will possibly be interesting to read in a year and see how it went.  I’m only including personal resolutions, not Ruboss / Leanpub ones…

My 2010 New Years Resolutions

1. Spend more time with Caroline and Evan, including setting aside enough time to play Lego and Wii with Evan between dinner and book time.  Teach Evan using Lego Mindstorms if he’s interested.
2. Exercise at least 3 times a week, and personal train at least once a month.  Actually do the workouts that the trainer creates (and do ALL 3 sets!), not just 1 or 2 based on how rushed or tired I am.  Go from my current 216 lbs and 36″ waist to 200 lbs and a 34″ waist.  (Yes, it’s totally stereotypical to have “go to the gym” on a New Years Resolutions list, but I don’t claim to be a beautiful and unique snowflake — only a slightly out of shape one!)
3. Eat vegetables regularly, especially broccoli, spinach, etc.  Eat less processed food, white flour, starch, etc.
4. Get the 7:10 train instead of the 7:40 train when working out in the morning.
5. Blog here at least once a week, hopefully more.  Ideally, something about Lean Publishing, but if I don’t have anything interesting to say about that, then blog about something else.
6. Limit social media and news consumption (Reddit, Hacker News, RSS feeds, TechCrunch, Twitter, etc) to 30 minutes a day. Ideally, use my iPhone to check all of this, rather than my laptop, since that way I’ll be more focused while working and less tempted to switch to distractions.
7. Self-publish Lean Publishing on Leanpub once I have at least 50 pages worth reading.  Accomplish this by March 1.  This should include everything worth keeping from my half-completed Publishing 2.0 manuscript that I had written and abandoned a couple years ago.
8. Promote Hello! Flex 4 better.  The ratio of about 400 hours writing to about 4 hours promoting is a really stupid one.  Specifically, make helloflex4.com link to all blog mentions, reviews, etc. Also, hook up affiliate codes and determine if it’s profitable to buy Google ads.

Obviously this isn’t a complete list of everything I need to do, but it’s measurable.  In a year I can check how many of these I kept, and make new ones for 2011.  I don’t want to make a prediction about how many I’ll actually accomplish, since I like being right and I don’t want to be self-defeating