drew tarvin blog » Goals

2-thousand-GREAT: October in Review

drew tarvin — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 21:07:29 +0000

Well today is Halloween which means one thing… OK so it means a lot of things (free candy, girls in risque outfits, and the end of October). The 31 on today’s date means it’s time to review my goals.

53 Weeks of Drewy Goodness. October was filled with performing at the New York Underground Comedy Festival, completing a daily to-do list, surviving a challenging week, and reviewing Personal Development for Smart People, and tomorrow I finish project number 44.
A Joke a Day. I passed the 300 mark this past month, with a few favorites of Alex Trebek, reading the dictionary, and wanting to be a plumber.
Perform Comedy 53 times. With 8 performances in October (including earlier today), I only have 4 more performances to go to reach my goal. Good thing too since we’re heading into the holiday season.
Get over 100,000 views on YouTube. This week’s goal is to make a video, but I’m not sure when I’ll be able to post it to YouTube since it’s part of a competition. Unless something drastic happens, this one may not get completed.
Publish an Article. I continue to write Articles, but I need to take the time to look at what it takes to get published.
Break into Top 10 Internal Blogs at P&G. The top 5 is my mainstay. Adding an email listserv has been a huge help.
Start a business. Well we didn’t quite reach $1, we’re sitting at a whopping $.27.
Have 13.5″ Guns. I had a good month, getting the arms back up to 13.25″.
Never hit Snooze. Aside from a few lapses, I’ve been doing OK with this (though I still struggle on the weekends.
Help Someone Achieve a Goal. I’m close to helping someone else achieve a goal, I just need to get confirmation.

Holy crap- only 2 months left in 2008! I have some ground to make up in a couple of these goals. Hopefully with the holiday breaks I’ll be able to get some stuff done- we’ll have to see. November’s goal is to finish up the rest of my stand-up performances so that I don’t have to perform in December if I don’t want to.

Project #43 – Personal Development for Smart People (Task)

drew tarvin — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 03:25:21 +0000

Personal development blogger, Steve Pavlina recently published a book called “Personal Development for Smart People.” As a way to promote his book, he offered to send a free copy to any blogger willing to review his book on their website.

I happen to be a blogger, I enjoy free things, and have an interest in personal development, so it seemed like a no brainer to join the other 400 bloggers and write a review. This week’s task is to finish reading the book and write a post about it, a la The Inner Game of Tennis from awhile back.

Success = A review of “Personal Development for Smart People” by Steve Pavlina.

Project #42 – Survive the Week (Review)

drew tarvin — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 03:30:17 +0000

Surprisingly, the week wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it might be. It certainly was an interesting challenge of working for 2 hours, then improvising for 3, then going back to work, but it was a little more manageable by identifying my motivating and demotivating triggers.

As it turns out, this upcoming week will likely be even busier than this one, but at least I have one week of the interesting schedule behind me.

Project #41 – Complete My Daily ToDo List (Task)

drew tarvin — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 03:48:39 +0000

I’ve gotten pretty good at capturing all of my “to do” items in Outlook 2007. The problem is that I’ll often assign them a due date that I never actually hit. I’ll generally do a weekly review and assign tasks for the next week, and each week I have to re-assign new dates to all of the tasks that I didn’t do previously.

This week’s challenge is to complete everything on my daily tasks lists each day. The challenge will be guessing accurately how much I’ll be able to accomplish each day.

Success = Completing all items on my daily task list each day.

Project #40 – New York Underground Comedy Festival (Review)

drew tarvin — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 04:22:34 +0000

It’s been awhile since I’ve done a competition, but it was good to get back on stage for more than just an open mic. My set was pretty solid, though not good enough to beat a very funny girl with a great character who became the eventual winner.

Thinking back, I wasn’t really all that happy with my set selection. I’m generally a very clean comedian, but tonight I did more of my PG-13 material (I don’t think I have any R stuff). I buckled under the assumption that the audience would be more inclined to like that type of humor, and in doing so, went away from a majority of what my set has become over the past couple of months.

All in all, good to do the competition. Performance pretty good, but choice of material could’ve been better. The set list is below (which unless you know comedy and have seen my set, will mean absolutely nothing):

Subway Teabag
12 Year Old
2 Decades
Competition
Doghouse
Vegan Friend
Facebook Relationship
Text Breakup
T9 Predictive Text
Text Alphabet

2-thousand-GREAT: September in Review

drew tarvin — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 11:30:37 +0000

We are now heading into the last quarter of 2008… wow. Let’s take a look at the goals.

53 Weeks of Drewy Goodness. This month, I optimized my blog, lived on a $100 budget, submitted a Writer’s packet, created a time budget, and started on building my set for a stand-up competition, bringing me to a total of 40 projects.
A Joke a Day. Whew- 274 jokes total. Some favorites from September: a canceled flight, oral surgery, and a divorce lawyer.
Perform Comedy 53 times. I only performed 3 times in September, leaving me at 41 performances for the year.
Get over 100,000 views on YouTube. I wasn’t sure if we were going to make any final changes to the video from last month, but it doesn’t look like we will. You can find the video here.
Publish an Article. I now have a few “articles” written (just check in the Article category). Now I’ll just have to take one of these ideas and get it published.
Break into Top 10 Internal Blogs at P&G. The internal blog continues to do well where I’m floating between the Top 5 and Top 10.
Start a business. Technically we’ve made $0.22 so far. Hopefully we’ll at least get to the $1 this month.
Have 13.5″ Guns. This month was rough on working out. First I was still adjusting to waking up early, then it was headaches, then sore throat, and now I’m in Cincinnati. All in all in means my arms are now back down to 13″.
Never hit Snooze. The challenge has still helped. I have hit snooze a few times (especially while here in Cincinnati), but overall I’m happy with how I’ve been waking up.
Help Someone Achieve a Goal. I have one or two things that I’m lining up for this one.

I can’t believe we’re in the final 3 months of the year already. I had a pretty solid month, though I need to start making specific progress on the video (views) and the article. I also need to build a buffer back in for stand-up, as I probably won’t perform that much towards the end of the year. Here’s to a productive October.

Project #40 – New York Underground Comedy Festival (Task)

drew tarvin — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 01:28:42 +0000

Next week is the New York Underground Comedy Festival. As part of the event, they have a “New Faces” competition where an audience decides on a comedian that will get to perform on three different industry shows. Guess who’s going to be performing in the competition? That’s right- yours truly.

As such, I need to revisit my Fave 5 and come up with the 5 minutes I’d like to perform, and then actually do them at the show.

Success = Perform at the New York Underground Comedy Festival.

Project #39 – Time Budget (Review)

drew tarvin — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 19:08:45 +0000

Like many, a typical week for me is atypical. For instance, this week started with me waking up in Niagara Falls (Buffalo), NY and ends with me in Columbus, OH, with a number of days in NYC in between. I created a time spreadsheet to track how I spent the 168 hours of my week, and it’s interesting to see where the hours actually went.

The key now, like any budget, is to align my goals to where I’m actually spending my resources. Considering I possibly want to get more into writing, the fact I only spent 45 minutes on it this week, for less than 1% of the week, is a problem. But, with a system to track my time now, and a way to visually see the results, I can make adjustments from week to week. We’ll see how things go a month from now to see if it things get better.

Project #39 – Time Budget (Task)

drew tarvin — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 01:48:55 +0000

Though it doesn’t always feel like it, time is our most precious resource. When people are laying on their deathbeds, rarely will they say “I wish I had more money.” Time- that’s what you would want. Yet a number of people will create a budget for their finances (I did it earlier this year when I wanted to get my finances under control), but how often do they create a budget for their time?

This week I want to remedy that situation by creating a budget of my time, based on a week, to follow for the duration of the year.

Success = A completed time budget for the week.

Project #38 – Writing Submission (Review)

drew tarvin — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 01:17:09 +0000

It’s amazing how much easier a sketch is to write when 1) You’re excited about the idea, and 2) You map out the beats before hand. I mapped out the beats for 3 sketches, and wrote out one of them. This was my first real attempt to write on political-type topics, though only 1 really has a viewpoint attached with it.

I’ve submitted the ideas to the CEO, and hopefully I’ll hear back soon about whether or not I’ll be able to intern with the network. Regardless, I think I will try to find a way to make the Mac vs PC one, I think it could turn out very funny.