If you’ve ever read “Good to Great” by Jim Collins, you’re familiar with the idea of a “big, hairy, audacious goal,” or “BHAG” for short. So, I’ve devised six such goals for the next year.

(If you’re in the Landmark Team Management and Leadership Program, these are my Team 2 Games in the World. If you don’t know what I’m referring to, check out http://LandmarkEducation.com/)

Here are my BHAG’s:

1. Creating an entrepreneurial household. This will look like a team of 10-20 entrepreneurs moving into a 3,000 – 5,000 square foot home and renovating it to facilitate 24/7 obsession with collective labors of love. I’m thinking this will include an espresso bar downstairs.

2. A creative sales training retreat. This will be based on training people to use their creative faculties to sell their stuff in a new way that they devise. It might look like, for example, selling insurance policies by singing vintage Zeppelin tunes to a ukulele on a street corner in Manhattan with brochures in the ukulele case.

3.  A #1 best-selling self-published book. This might be my next book (”Get That Book Out of Your Head” – subtitled “…and onto the shelves”). Or, it might be a book that I work with a client to create. In any case, an idea will be born out into the world this year in a big way. I’m also putting out the intention that either I or the author with whom I work will receive an offer to buy the motion picture rights.

4.  A 33% reduction in the number of cars on the road worldwide. Don’t ask me how I’m going to pull this off. I will do it primarily by writing, I think. But part of the plan is to show people the hidden benefits of carpooling (beyond gas/wear and tear savings). I’m referring to the relationships that develop when people spend time together in a car, as opposed to five people making long commutes in five separate cars. This is doable. Just look how many times you see bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic, with one person in each car. I rest my case.

5. A skill-building video game. This was inspired by “Guitar Hero.” I was thinking, what if somebody made a game like this, which could teach people how to play a real guitar? I’m thinking if I could have my way, I’d make a video game to teach people how to learn foreign languages. But the criteria is that it has to be as addictive and fun as the most mind-numbing shoot-em-up games that people use to rot their brains.

6. Mastery of lucid dreaming. This was inspired by Timothy Ferriss’s blog post, where he discusses how he trained with a professional wrestler in his sleep. I’ve been wanting to do this for years, and haven’t made it a priority. By this time next year, I will be doing it nightly, along with a power team of out-of-the-box thinking entrepreneurs.

If you are interested in being part of any of these things, or know someone who might be, please shoot me an e-mail. Writer at Dave dash (”-”) Baldwin dot c0m.

As some of my blog readers know, I’ve been working on a book for the last couple of months. In the beginning, the process was slow, bumpy, and irregular. I was letting myself get stuck on a number of common hang-ups. What I knew, from the beginning, was that if I was really going to finish this book, I needed to start talking about it. I told about a dozen people about the book, and even e-mailed the initial outline to a handful of people, asking for their thoughts. I had a round of e-mail debate about what the title should be, and then I got to work.

This worked fine in the beginning, but I wasn’t being very systematic about it. I was being haphazard, and only working on the book when I “had time” for it. After a full week went by and I had done nothing at all, I realized that something had to give. This book needed to get done, and it wasn’t going to write itself. I hung my head in shame, and posted a status message on Facebook: “I haven’t worked on the book in a week.” Soon, I started to get replies from friends in my network.

I’d been searching for another writer to hold me accountable lately, and I’ve had difficulty finding one. Two adjacent slot machines don’t usually hit the jackpot at the same time, and two writers are rarely at the same phase of writing their book at the same time. I found that the other people in my life had things to do. But I needed someone to hold me accountable to staying on track on a daily basis.

In the last week, I found a new solution. Every day, I post the total word count on my book. As of right now, it’s 49,769. Yesterday morning, it was 45,813.  Yesterday, I came in at 3,956 words. This fell just shy of my minimum benchmark – 4,000 words/day. My stretch goal is 6,600 words per day. I will celebrate when I’ve hit this mark and maintained it for a week straight. Unfortunately, I’m about to go into the editing phase of this book now, since the first draft is almost finished.

I’ll be doing a book every quarter, though. Next quarter, I’m pretty sure the book will be about how to write a book. That subject isn’t final until I’ve had a chance to do some market research, though. In any case, Facebook will know what’s going on with it at every step of the way.

 At the time of this blog post, I’m about 75% finished creating the content of my book, which I plan to self-publish and release in a few weeks. Anyone who’s been following me on Facebook or Twitter already knows this.

I knew, from the beginning, that I would be much more likely to finish a book that everyone knows I’m working on. I have the added advantage of being a ghost writer, and the entire world needs to know that I can actually finish and deliver a book in a timely manner. This is mandatory for my credibility, which gives me an added incentive to continue working, which most people don’t have. However, the status update is a secret weapon that anyone can use to keep their own book moving forward.

The first thing I did, when I decided to write a book, was to tell everyone about it. I knew that if my friends and family knew I was writing a book, they would keep asking about it. Then, I started to e-mail a few chapters here and there to find out if people were interested in the material I was creating. Mostly green lights with a few yellows and reds. The momentum was difficult to maintain this way, though. I wasn’t going to keep e-mailing my book’s content to everyone in the world, and people didn’t want to keep pestering me by asking the same question (“How’s the book going?”) over and over. I wouldn’t have minded, but I can understand the other point of view.

Status updates, on the other hand, have been an easy way to tell a large number of people what I’m doing. I’ve been regularly posting updates on my book to Facebook and Twitter, and as a result, there are plenty of people who now know that I’m writing a book. The added bonus: these are people that I wouldn’t have called or e-mailed individually. There is a practical limit to the amount of time I can spend telling people one-on-one that I’m writing a book. The number of people following me on Facebook and Twitter, however, doesn’t change the amount of time I spend posting to these networks.

Now, I have a number of people who are already sold on the book, ready to buy an advance copy! Unfortunately, I’m not actually selling advance copies yet, but it’s neat to know that I’ll have this option in four months when I’m releasing my next book.

If you’re writing a book, be sure to let Facebook know how it’s coming from time to time. It will make a world of difference.