At this time of the year many people take the opportunity to reflect on the previous year. Hopefully, it has been successful year for them, and they look at the coming year with an eye to see what they can improve. Many people make New Year's Resolutions with the hope that they will help them to achieve more in the coming year. Some quick research suggests that 80% of New Year's resolutions are broken in the first two weeks.
The reason that most New Year's Resolutions are broken so soon as because the resolutions do not have true goals or plans to achieve those goals. Often a New Year's resolution is a week wish, not a goal. By definition, a goal has to have a measurable result and it has to have a time limit. Without a measurable result or a time limit our goal is nothing more than a resolution.
For example, you Resolution might say "I want to lose more weight." So if you lose a quarter of a pound (250 g) you have achieved your resolution, but have you really lost much weight? You could of course lose this weight just by weighing yourself before dinner. A goal on the other hand would say that you want to achieve a specific weight, say 70 kg, by a certain date, say Christmas. The difference with this goal is that it has a measurable result (the desired weight) it also has a date to achieve this by (Christmas). This also allows you to measure your progress towards the goal. Let us say for example that you started out at 80 kg and by working hard through the year you achieve your weight of 71 kg by Christmas. You have not actually achieved your goal, but on the other hand you may have done very well to get so close.
In a recent newsletter I told you that it is time to start making your plans for 2014 and I gave you five steps to help you do this. This month I want to reinforce the idea that you need create goals and you also need to create plans to help you achieve those goals. In the example above, you might help yourself to achieve your weight by giving up sweet food. That might be all you need to do to help achieve your goal.
To get better at Vectorworks one of the plans you could make is to attend regular monthly meetings. The Feedback from the users who do attend the regular meetings is that they have now learned more about Vectorworks since attending the online sessions than they knew before. One of my subscribers has been using Vectorworks since 2008, that he is learned more about Vectorworks from attending the online sessions since June 2013 than he ever knew before. He thought that he knew Vectorworks pretty well, but now he is absolutely astounded at how powerful Vectorworks has become. He is now committed to attending the monthly sessions.
In 2013 the subscription service produced 12 manuals with 144 movies linked to those manuals. As well as that we recorded 42 movies of the workshop sessions, 23 Landmark Special Interest Group movies, 19 Architect Special Interest Group movies, 13 Education Special Interest Group movies, and three Vectorscript Special Interest Group movies. Making a total of 244 movies in 2013. The annual subscription cost is $249 US, which makes each movie worth just over a dollar. I think that is pretty good value, especially when you realize that there are now seven years worth of resources on the website.
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