I write a lot about goals. Goals for the day, goals for life, goals for the week. Goals before retirement. Setting goals, monitoring goals, achieving goals, dropping goals. Different types of goals, different types of methods for managing goals. Having goals as a goal in and of itself. Sometimes it veers into performance measurement.

Yet, all of the posts, regardless of the topic, are really about planning.

Hence, I’m going to rename the entire category “Pondside Planner”. Plus, I have long-term plans (hah!) for a book and an app with the same name. I have tentatively given it three related “descriptions”. Purpose, priorities, and progress; goals, grit, and growth; and fundamentals, focus, and frameworks. I know, they need work.

In the meantime, I’m upgrading my imagery too. In the past, I’ve used a combo of images. Initially, I loved the idea of my version of the “Insights Discovery”-type four-quadrant colour map. I even added a yin-yang symbol in the centre.

I even went all-in at one point on those motifs, with a much deeper framework diagram of a Personal Development Model (they both might resurface in the book / guide).

I also have specialized images for a larger quest, 60 things by age 60, 50 by 50, travel, experiences.

At different times, I’ve used and loved all of those images. By contrast, for the day-to-day stuff, I went with more mundane images. A planner, a checklist, an arrow hitting a target.

They have served me well over the last 25 years, although mostly in the last 15. But as I said in previous posts, I am leaning into the frog motif and the new name, the Pondside Planner. An almost new identity, built as much to reflect the energy of my warrior frog as the calm demeanour of my reader frog.

I’m showing the whole image for this one, not just the rounded view, as there is a lot going on in the image. The frog, of course, is a red-eyed tree frog. That’s standard.

He’s not just wearing glasses, he’s wearing MY glasses.

Working on a to-do list to signify goals, next to the pond aka Pondside.

There’s a penguin in the scene, my son’s avatar.

And I have a four-quadrant personality profile diagram on the wall behind him.

If you can’t read the to do list, it says:

• Eat more flies
• Start quest
• Clean swamp

Oh, and a crossword puzzle, in honour of my father, who always had a crossword puzzle book on the go next to his kitchen chair.

That simple category image is pulling a lot of weight in a small space. I love it. And perhaps for the first time since I started the blog, the category of “goals” is now accurately reframed as “The Pondside Planner”.

Let me know whether you think the image is conveying “planner” well enough or if it could be improved with some better props, particularly if you have ideas!

Until the next project starts…