Comedy Goals 2009: End of Year Review

At the beginning of the year I posted my goals for stand up in 2009 and then I had a mid year review. Well today is the last day of the year, so let’s compare goals with what actually happened. Go public accountability!

BLACK text is my original goal, and BOLD text is my update.

Performing:

• Get on stage 150 times this year
  I was on stage 271 times this year
• Submit an entry to 2 comedy festivals / comedy contests this year
  I auditioned and competed in two comedy contests. I didn’t make it out of the preliminary round of either one: I came in third place in one and sixth place in the other. I also submitted to two festivals and wasn’t accepted to either.
• Perform at 3 college shows
  I produced and performed in exactly three college shows at Caltech before dropping out. The audience turn out was great for all three shows (between 40 and 70 people each time).
• Do 50 shows in front of a real (people that are not comedians) audience (barking for time counts for this)
  I did 181 shows with real audiences
• Practice 10 minutes of my material outloud each day, without notes
  I have been practicing 6 days a week on average

Producing:

• Start producing a recurring show
  I produced a recurring show at Caltech. It only ran three times because I dropped out and moved back east.

Writing:

• Write 100 blog posts
  I wrote 264 posts this year. However, when I set this goal, I wasn’t planning on doing a performance critique of every set… Not counting performance critiques, I have 44 posts (including this one).
• Write (something, anything) every day
  I started the year writing 3-4 times a week, I’ve written “morning pages” every day since November 11th and plan on continuing to do this daily for forever
• Write one spec script
  I did not write a spec script
• Write 5 short sketches
  I wrote 21 sketches this year. 15 during my three week class and 6 afterwards.

Learning:

• Take an improv class
  I took five improv classes and taught a weekly workshop for two months

Traffic & Marketing:

• Get my facebook fan page up to 150 fans
  I’m currently at 196 fans. Please go here to become my fan on facebook and to help me beat my goal by even more 
• Get 50 RSS Subscribers
  I’m currently at 23 RSS subscribers. You can subscribe here
• Have 200 unique visitors a month to the blog
  I averaged 279 unique visitors per month, with a nice uptrend in the last three months

Overall grade for the year: A-

Holy shit, this whole goal setting thing is amazing. When I wrote these goals at the beginning of the year I didn’t think I’d do five of them.

Turns out I fully achieved 10 of my 14 stated goals, more or less achieved 2 other goals (write everyday and practice every day) and completely missed two goals (RSS subscribers and spec script). I realize that 10 + 2 half credits out of 14 doesn’t make for a 90% but I’m not in school anymore and I achieved the most important goal of performing enough times on stage.

Since this worked so well, my goals for the coming year (which will be posted tomorrow) are going to be WAY more ambitious. Then again, I seriously raised the stakes on my succeeding at comedy this year, so if tomorrow’s goals don’t seem slightly insane, I’m not trying hard enough.