PYG 109: Feel behind on your goals? You can turn this year around

Today is the first day of July, the first day of Q3, and the official halfway point of the year.

Since we only have six months left in 2019, if you’ve had time to reflect on the six months that have passed, you may be lamenting on how far you are from the goals you set in January.

(Or you may have crushed your goals completely, to which I say, yay you!)

But if you are nowhere near where you thought you’d be, consider this your pep talk – it’s time to get back in the game.

I’m here to let you know, all is not lost.

Even if you were asleep from January – June, you can make up the difference with the months we have left. You simply need to revisit your goals, tweak your strategy, and decide what you’re going to do differently.

But first, realize you’re not alone. According to U.S. News & World Report, the failure rate for New Year’s resolutions is said to be about 80 percent, and most lose their resolve by mid-February.

I for one am guilty of hopping off the consistency train. At the end of May, I looked at my annual goals and felt a little demoralized; I simply was not on track with many of the goals I’d set.

But in true Amanda fashion, I had some surprise “sleeper” wins that helped me close out the month, the quarter, and the first half of the year in spectacular fashion.

Here’s what’s been going on:

One of my goals for the year? More international travel.

But for whatever reason when I set the goal in January, I failed to book any tickets or plan any trips. Fast forward to May: a friend asked if I could join her in Italy on the heels of a big conference she was attending for work. I said yes, spent an epic week in Italy in June, and just like that, my travel and adventure goals are back on track for the year.

Another goal? Double my podcast downloads in 2019. As June approached, I could see I wasn’t on track to meet that goal. I had exceeded last year’s numbers up to this point, but doubled them?

Not quite.

Then by chance I went looking for parenting podcasts to help me navigate a few issues with my kids as puberty is setting in, we’re switching schools in the fall, and I need a more effective way to communicate with my soon to be teenaged son. I randomly met a parenting podcaster at a media event in mid-May. She’s doing a challenge to record an episode every day this year, which inspired me to challenge myself to publish an ambitious 30 episodes in 30 days.

While I set out to do the challenge because I was inspired by the parenting podcast, I inadvertently boosted my podcast downloads due to the sheer volume of new episodes. And just like that, we’re back on track and back on schedule to reach the 2x goal for the year.

Sidebar: I learned a lot about epic productivity, motivation, and building habits during that challenge and will share the lessons in a future missive, but for now, here are a few of my favorite episodes:

PYG 108 – You have to sell it

PYG 100 – What are you willing to create?

PYG 99 – Muscle Memory

PYG 97 – Making yourself at home on a new level

PYG 92 – Build a brand library so people can find your ideas

Another big goal? Land media exposure.

June was an exceptional month for our PR clients in Maximum Exposure.

After two months of crafting ideas and pitching, I was honestly getting a little worried that we hadn’t had more media wins. So at the beginning of June, I decided to further examine our process to figure out what might have been missing.

We focused more on breaking news, increased our time spent on research, and changed the order of the weekly program touch points.

The result? Our changes worked like magic.

In the month of June alone, our students were interviewed or featured by Fast Company, the Washington Post, the Washington Post Express, ABC Milwaukee, V100.7 FM in Milwaukee, ABC 7 DC and Let’s Talk Live.

While media exposure wasn’t tied to a specific goal I set at the beginning of the year, it was tied to a goal I set when we opened