December 2017 Goal Review: Minafi Content & Settling into Salt Lake City

Every month I review how I did during my last month and see how I did on my focus. This is a follow-up to my previous post, November / December 2017 Goals & Moving Status! Since I do these goal posts monthly, you might want to read them all by checking out the goals category.

December went swimmingly (that’s not a word I use enough). Our move to Salt Lake City has been great, we found a new apartment we love, our stuff made it safely there (for the most part), we closed on selling our house in Orlando (!) and we’ve been enjoying the snow! We’re all ready to start January on a high note with lots of energy. But before that, I want to look back on December.

Settling Into Salt Lake City

A big focus of this month has been around just settling in so that I can actually work towards any goals I want to achieve. With Mrs. Minafi out of town for half the month, it also meant me doing double duty on dog walks and apartment setup which slowed things down a little. It’s been a lot of fun exploring the new city and actually walking to new restaurants. Being able to walk 2 blocks to a ramen shop may end up being dangerous, but we’ll see.

We ended up not moving over all of our furniture – which has meant a somewhat empty apartment for now. Luckily we don’t need to be rushed to buy a new couch now and can find one that works for us. We ended up finding one that was delivered just before the end of the month.

Goal Review: December 2017

For December, I set the following goal:

Research and develop a content strategy for 2018 that takes into account a learners journey towards financial independence and SEO.

This was a very Minafi-specific goal. The focus was really around trying to make sure that what I’m writing has a purpose and common theme to it that is clearly communicated. I’ve been doing some explorations around what this could look like and how I should organize the site to better reflect the goal. For that to work, I have to actually have a goal. Where am I hoping to take people by reading about articles here on Minafi?

That led me to try to write a mission for this site. Something that all posts should rally around. I wanted this to be broad enough that I could write a post and just discard it if it doesn’t help people go toward this mission.

Minafi exists to help people earn more time in their lives through mindfully planning a life they want and starting to live that life today.

There is nothing in here about mindfulness, minimalism, financial independence or investing, but those are all ways to achieve these. Within each of these groups, there’s a wealth of topics to write about. The core concept to me is about earning more time, which everything trails back to. When I originally wrote this, I thought the core concept would be FI, but looking deeper it’s really all about having the time to live the life you want.

I’m still refining what this will look like, but I’ve been having fun exploring it.

Mind Mapping is a great exercise to help brainstorm. Each node could be anything from a blog post to a category to a course/product. This was a good start to figuring out what to write about and what areas I should focus on.

For posts like this about Minafi, I’ve been asking myself, “Does this fit in with this mission?”. I’ve decided these meta posts do. I think they help show one possible way to live the life I want. It doesn’t mean other people should be setting goals if they don’t want to, but seeing how it works (or doesn’t) can be a great look into how others work.

Organizing Content Into Groups

One thing I’ve always loved is when content is organized into linear groups. It shows the author has a plan on how you should go from point A to B. It’s why I’ve always loved Code School’s Learning Paths, as well as Pluralsights Paths. I’m hoping to take some inspiration from these concepts to help better organize content here around these groups.

•  Get into a flow in the new city. I’ve joined a gym, wrote a bunch of posts here, fixed a number of bugs/issues and have been finding my way around the city.
•  100 pre-researched posts organized with the topics. 100 was way too many. I’ve planned out the next 3 months of posts in a spreadsheet, which will make writing them a lot easier now. I’m sure these will change up as I think of new things to write about.
•  Organize content around these categories on Minafi.com. The mind map was a good start at this. The next step is making changes to Minafi.com to highlight these categories.

How did you do on your goals from December?