Becoming a Lion - My LEO Goals for 2023

As a Project Manager, I always create projects around my goals, even personal ones, because that helps me hone my PM skills and maximizes my chances of achieving those goals. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that as soon as I saw the "My LEO Goals for 2023" initiative, I immediately started to design a project around it.

I will treat this year-long journey that starts today exactly as I would any other projects I work with, and I will share my progress on LeoFinance so others can follow it and, if it's of their interest, maybe learn some of the basics of Project Management.

The goal

In case you are not familiar with the initiative I mentioned above, I strongly recommend you read about it in detail on the official announcement, but, in summary, the idea is to come up with a plan to achieve a particular amount of Leo Power in December 2023. The minimum amount of Leo Power you need in the next 12 months depends on how much you have now. In my case, I currently have roughly 6k Leo Power, so, according to the rules, I need, at least, to reach Lion Status, which is 15k Leo Power.

That means I need to more than double my current stack! It's an ambitious goal, but I'm sure with a good plan and disciplined execution, I will get there.

But how am I going to do it?

The plan

So, I already have a minimum goal (15k Leo Power) and a clear timeline (December 2023) now, all I need is a plan to take me there, but before laying it down, I want to demonstrate a few considerations and projections I made to design my plan.

I started by projecting how much I could earn from author rewards in the next year, and for that, I used the PERT estimation technique, which is very common in Project Management. I won't explain it in detail in this article, but in a nutshell, PERT estimation is done according to the following formula:

PERT = (O + 4M + P) / 6

Where:
O = optimistic scenario
P = pessimistic scenario
M = most likely scenario

To determine each scenario for my author rewards, I ran a statistical analysis of my posts from 2022. I won't bore you to death with specifics, but the final results were:

O = 31.215 LEO
P = 3.125 LEO
M = 12.08 LEO

Applying those figures to the formula, we get:

PERT = 13.78 LEO

That means, on average, I will get 13.78 LEO per post in author rewards.

Considering my current routine and responsibilities, committing to at least 3 posts a week is challenging yet realistic. That's much better than my current average but still feasible with some planning and discipline.

So, assuming 3 posts a week, averaging 13.78 LEO in author rewards (already discounting the curators' share), we are looking at roughly 165 LEO a month or 2k LEO in author rewards throughout 2023. That's not bad at all, but not nearly enough, either!

Another component of this equation is curator rewards. As an active manual curator, I'm currently getting around 25 LEO a month in curation rewards, which means around 300 LEO in a year. That will get me closer to my goal, but I still need more.

My curation rewards will increase slightly as I power up some LEO along the way, and it would not be hard to model and project that increase, but I prefer to leave it out of the equation and treat it as a risk management margin.

Now, in this situation, the only thing I could do to increase my LEO earnings sensibly would be to increase my posting goals to 4 or maybe 5 a week. However, I expect 2023 to be even busier than 2022, so I will be conservative and keep the 3 posts per week target.

This plan will take me to around 9k Leo Power if I follow it as it is, meaning it clearly needs some adjustments, and the only other thing I can do to hit my goal is to buy LEO off the market.

With a projection of 9k Leo Power, I'm still 6k short of my goal, so that is how much I will need to buy during the next 12 months. I could distribute this amount evenly and buy 500 LEO per month, but I think there may be some buying pressure towards the end of the year due to people trying to hit their own goals, causing the price of LEO to increase; therefore, I will probably make some larger buys in the next 3 or 4 months and then distribute the remaining amount over the rest of the timeline.

As an initial plan, I will buy 2k LEO for the first 3 months and then around 200 LEO in the following months, which should be just enough to take me there.

Risk Management

Managing risks is a crucial part of project management because no matter how solid a plan is, there are always uncertain events that could take place and alter the project's outcomes.

My current plan looks good on paper, but there is at least one risk with high probability and high impact, which is the possibility of me not being able to post 3 times a week.

Author rewards represent a large chunk of the LEO I need to earn for my plan to work, so this risk needs a suitable mitigation plan, and I have one that will hopefully do the trick:

I will try to maintain a backlog of at least 3 posts that are ready or at least very close to being ready to publish, so if I'm too busy to write during a particular period, I can buy myself at least one week without jeopardizing the plan.

It's important to say that, just like the project plan itself, the risk log is a "living" thing that should be constantly monitored and updated as needed, so I may identify new risks or even change the mitigation plan to the one risk I already identified.

Monthly goals

Finally, after going through all that analysis and all those projections, I can define monthly goals for 2023. Considering 165 LEO per month in author rewards, 25 LEO in curator rewards and the amount I'm going to buy (2k for the first 3 months and 200 for the rest of the year), my monthly goals look something like this:

Month	Leo Power
Jan 2023	6.000
Feb 2023	8.190
Mar 2023	10.380
Apr 2023	12.570
May 2023	12.960
Jun 2023	13.350
Jul 2023	13.740
Aug 2023	14.130
Sep 2023	14.520
Oct 2023	14.910
Nov 2023	15.300
Dec 2023	15.690

As you can see, I'm projected to reach my goal 1 month before the deadline, which is intentional. It's yet another risk management strategy that allows me to stay on track without taking any major corrective actions in case I'm slightly off target on a particular month.

Final thoughts

Kudos to the LeoFinance team for yet another great initiative! I'm looking forward to kicking off this project and seeing how it evolves during next year. I will also be on the lookout for other fellow Lions' journeys because I'm curious to see how the community will respond.

In the next few days, I will do another post on how things are progressing during the first month of the project.

Posted Using LeoFinance ^Beta