As someone who is committed to become a better planner—and a better worker of the plan—I found a website a couple of months ago that I really enjoy. It's nothing elaborate and it won't magically transform a person into a great planner, but it does provide good motivation. It's called 43 Things.
The premise is simple. As a registered user (it's free), a person makes a list of 43 things that he or she wants to accomplish. The list can include general or specific plans (I prefer specific). Once a person enters a goal, he or she is affiliated with all of the other people on the website with the same goal.
One of the things on my list is to "publish a novel." I'm not the only one with that goal—277 people right now want to publish one as well. I've actually written a couple of novels, but I want to write another one—now that I finally know what I'm doing. The first two were just practice. I didn't know that at the time, but that's what transpired.
Anyway, when you click on one of your goals you'll see short bios of other people who are trying to do the same thing. You can click on bios and leave "cheers" to root people on. Or you can send messages through the service—but 43 Things runs a tight ship. Spamming is discouraged and they have a system in place to help keep it from happening.
Beyond seeing what others with similar goals are up to, you can also write entries (much like blog posts) that get attached to your goals so people can see how you are progressing. You can also see the bios of people who have already accomplished the goal you are working on and they tell you whether or not they believed the goal was worth pursuing.
You get the idea. The site is full of ways to bond with people who are pursuing the same goals as you are. Knowing that others are pursuing and struggling toward the same things somehow strengthens a person's resolve to continuing the fight.
I'm still tweaking my list, but when I get it done, I'll probably post it here at Little Nuances. 43 Things even has a RSS feed which makes it easy to display a list on blogs and websites. Give the website a try when you get a chance.
