At the beginning of March I set myself some goals…some went better than others, put it that way ;) Here’s a roundup of how I got on.

1. Read at least one business book

I was pretty enthusiastic about this one, and ended up reading three books because I did a LOT of travelling (last count was about 900 miles I think). The first book was Belching out the Devil: Global Adventures with Coca-Cola – basically a book outlining what’s wrong with the company and the human and environmental issues it causes. It took me a long time to get into it and the later chapters were fairly good. The majority of the book was pretty irritating though – poor jokes, poor arguments, and hypocrisy were common themes. I really wanted to hate Coca Cola, but to be honest the book was so poor it failed to ignite any of that for me really. To add insult to injury, a couple of the chapters hadn’t been proofed properly and were full of spelling and grammar errors.

Thankfully the other two books I read more than made up for it: Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion and Grinding it out: The Making of McDonald’s. Influence was listed by several industry people as a recommended read, and I have to admit that a book by a psychology and marketing professor piqued my interest. Some of the examples and case studies I was vaguely familiar with, but the analysis was pretty good. It gives a great insight into manipulation tactics that people and companies use. I spotted several things I do myself without even realising ;)

I expected Grinding it out to be an anti-McDonald’s book in a similar vein to the Coke one, but it was in fact written by Ray Kroc, the man responsible for franchising McDonald’s and basically making it a success…or at least, that’s what the book suggests. I have to say I found it fascinating; I enjoyed Ray’s writing style, and whilst you can tell he was a born salesman, he’s very matter of fact and not at all arrogant. I’d recommend reading both of the above if you have any interest at all in sales, marketing or business generally.

2. Reply to all emails, tweets and PMs

I didn’t achieve 100% with this one, but I replied to almost everything. It can be more than a little overwhelming with so much to sort through, but I’m going to count this one as a success.

3. Finish my photo project

Ha. Yeah. This one was wayyyy too optimistic. I’m still working on the photos and there’s a long way to go yet. I definitely overestimated how much time (and motivation) I’d have to work on this.

4. Start reading my photography stuff

I finished my copy of Digital SLR magazine plus read the first of Scotts Kelby’s Digital Photography books. Considering they came so highly recommended to me, I was considerably underwhelmed. I’m a novice, and yet I knew a lot of the tips given. They were also incredibly recycled throughout the (short) book; a lot of it felt like token space-filling, and the fact that the book was written to fit the page space and layout rather than the other way round really irritated me. I’m annoyed I paid for so many blank pages and poor formatting. The several pages of ads in the back was an extra annoyance; the books aren’t cheap for the size and quality, so to have ads in as well cheapened the whole thing. I had to laugh at his ‘recommended books’ page, since one of his recommendations is his own second book in the same series in the middle of a list of other people’s books. Having said all that, it wasn’t too bad, but hopefully the other books will be of a higher standard.

5. Get up earlier

I did a bit too well with this one; my body decided to wake me up earlier and earlier every single day. Towards the end of the month I was waking myself up just before 6am, which inevitably led to me getting really overtired and angry at around 9pm before falling asleep out of exhaustion at round 10:30pm. Since the clocks have changed now, I’m hoping I’ll get up at a more reasonable time. It’s rare my body will let me go back to sleep once I’ve woken up – my brain is instantly buzzing. I am enjoying having more in the way of daylight hours and morning energy though.

6. Exercise more

I got some home workouts in, including a yoga DVD, super quick cardio workouts and some ‘Wii U Your Shape’, but I was starting to crave the gym. I pushed myself to sign back up today and it was the best thing I’ve done for ages. They’ve painted it purple, Madagascar 2 was on one of the screens and it was pretty much empty. I had a fantastic workout and got a real buzz from it, which is great because I’ve been feeling quite ill recently. I even managed to avoid the ice cream and burger vans on my way out (kudos to the genius who thought that one up!).

7. Reduce the caffeine again

I did fairly well with this one. There were some days (and nights) where I had a few glasses of Coke/Diet Coke, but considering how much Diet Pepsi I used to drink, I’m pretty happy with this one.

8. Get a couple more websites live

Yeah, this got sidelined in favour of passive income stuff and a bit of client work. And also because my developer hasn’t finished his coding ;) One of these is going on the list again for next month though.

Overall, I don’t think I’ve done too badly. March has included two trips to London, a trip to Swindon, baking Easter cupcakes and Viennese fingers, earning quite a lot of extra cash, a day visit to Leicester, lots of meals out, 40 hour+ working weeks and various other things I’ve already forgotten, so it’s been busy!

First attempt at Viennese fingers – they taste much better than they look!

Goals for April

• Read one business book – Same as March.
• Read one health book – By ‘health’ I mean depression, anxiety and similar things. I finished a workbook last month and found it pretty useful, so I’m adding this as a category.
• Read one book for pleasure – One of the guys from work lent me a book recently, so I’m hoping to read that for April.
• Read something photography-related – Again, same as March. I’ll probably end up reading another Scott Kelby at the very least.
• Get one new site live – Fingers crossed!
• Eat healthier – This was something I tried to do in March, but I veered between ridiculously good eating and ridiculously bad eating. I have a big food shop being delivered tomorrow as an incentive to not eat out so much.
• Go to the gym at least twice a week – I’m not sure if I’ll achieve this because I’m away at least a couple of weekends, but I’m going to give it a go and maybe try and average it out over the month!

My trusty photography assistant taking a well-earned break

What are your goals for April?