You have goals, right?

I don't mean "get a job," although for many, that's understandably your immediate and urgent priority. But as you are too aware, in this excruciating dumpster fire of a job market, landing something is almost totally out of your control.

I'm talking about achievable goals to keep you motivated and maintain forward progress. Goals you can measure and know that you've succeeded. Goals that don't depend on someone else.

Last quarter, I had two main goals:

1. Increase users by 50%
2. Build a set of features to become a paid tier

I crushed the first goal, but the second one... a total miss.

As a novice vibe coder, it was ridiculous for me to think I could design, build, test, and release a group of sophisticated features in three months. It was too ambitious given my situation.

Yet I set those expectations for myself, and then wondered why I became increasingly stressed as the end of the quarter approached. "I will never reach my goals," I told myself.

I felt I had failed.

Actually, it was my goals that failed.

They were too big, too vague, and too unrealistic.

They didn't account for the time I needed to invest in learning and the fact that often "progress" looked like reverting everything I'd worked on that week.

They didn't account for unexpected crises that demanded my attention. Or the well-intentioned, but derailing, pivot to solve a prevalent, yet unrelated problem.

So here I am, contemplating the end of the year and setting new goals for this quarter. More targeted and specific this time. Hopefully, reasonable and achievable.

I'm uncomfortable sharing them (in case I miss again), but here they are:

1. Release improvements to remote/hybrid/on site accuracy (I originally used "finish" in my goal, but removed it since the inevitable long tail of edge cases makes "finishing" unattainable)
2. Expand the Applied workflow to include tracking which resume was sent and any responses
3. Create the skeleton for a networking tracker— design the initial layout; understand and add database fields
4. Resurrect the Stripe integration
5. Get feedback from at least 2 users per week (Reach out if you want to chat!)

What about you? Do you have goals for the remainder of the year?

If so, I'd love to hear about them. Your goals could provide me with ideas for enhancements for ZenSearch.

If not, consider goals like: • Connecting and networking with X number of people • Learning a new skill or digging in on an existing one • Creating a project or case study • Committing to exercise, yoga, or meditation X times a week • Taking time every day to think about something you're grateful for

Set them today so we can celebrate our success soon!

Check us out at ZenSearch.jobs and share our platform with anyone looking for something new. Together, we can make job searching a little more zen.