Setting Goals
Hello dear readers!
I don’t know about any of you, but the last few years have felt like a veritable dumpster fire. Hopefully you’re all having a positive start to 2023 and that trend continues on an upward slope.
New years is often the time people set… dare I say it? Resolutions! While I think New Years Resolutions have gotten a bit of a bad rap more recently, I think goal setting can be really important, whether you do it on New Years or any time of year.
In my personal experience, if I don’t have a goal, or something I’m working towards, I tend to just sort of flounder around without direction or purpose. I tend to be much more focused and productive when I have a goal I’m working towards. There are some keys to good goal setting though.
Making SMART goals is imperative. You need to make sure that your goal is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. You don’t have to use the SMART acronym exactly, but it does help.
Specific - if you set an ambiguous goal, it’s hard to know if you’ve ever achieved it. “I want to be more healthy” is a common New Years resolution. Another example might be “I want to get better at art.” These are so vague, it’s hard to know if I’ve really achieved them.
Measurable - Going back to our previous example, how can I measure if I’m getting better at art? Not only was that goal not specific enough to know if I’ve actually achieved it, but there was no way to measure progress.
Achievable - Is your goal something you can actually achieve? “I want to write an 50,000 word novel in three days.” While this goal is both specific and measurable, it’s near impossible that you could actually accomplish it. NaNoWriMo challenges people to write 50,000 words in a month. To accomplish that in three days would be legendary. Set yourself up for success and give yourself an achievable goal. That doesn’t mean it can’t be ambitious, but the other pieces need to line up. Writing 50,000 words in a month or even three months makes that goal much more achievable.
Realistic - Very similar to the achievable goal is to make your goal realistic. “I want to travel to the moon and write a 50,000 word novel in one month.” Technically, that is specific, measurable, and MAAAAYBE achievable. But is it realistic? For an astronaut maybe. But the vast majority of us are not astronauts, so for many of this, this wouldn’t be a great goal.
Timely - Similar to measurable, you need make sure you have a reasonable time limit on your goal, or you may just put it off. Parkinson’s Law states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." Make sure that you select an appropriate time frame for your goal. Are you giving yourself too much time? Write 50,000 words in five years. Or too little time? Write 50,000 words in five days. Or, a reasonable, achievable amount? 50,000 words in five months.
As an example: “I want to draw animals for 30 minutes at a time, twice a week, for two months.” The ultimate goal of this is to improve my ability to draw animals, but I have set specific, realistic, timely, achievable, measurable parameters on that goal to help me get there.
The whole reason I bring all of this up is that around Thanksgiving, Dustin, Phil, and I all set writing goals that we wanted to achieve by Christmas. We had to make them specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely. One of the goals looked a little something like this. “I will write up to the inciting incident in my story by Christmas by getting up early and working on my book every day before work.” This is paraphrased a bit, but you get the idea.
The best part was that all of us achieved our goals! I really think if we had not all set goals and worked to hold each other accountable, then none of us would have made as much progress on our books as we did. Sometimes the pressure of a deadline can be a real motivator. Having accountabil-a-buddies to help keep you on track also helps.
Your mileage may vary, but for me, I need goals to keep me on track. I set out with the goal of writing and publishing a novel. That’s a huge goal, so for me I had to break it down into smaller bite-sized goals, and once I achieved one of them, I could set a new goal that would bring me closer to fulfilling my ultimate goal of finishing my book and getting it published.
This is just a brief summary on the topic, but I encourage you to dive in and set your own goals to help get you closer to achieving something you’ve always wanted to accomplish, no matter what that thing is. One of my friends is fond of “A dream without a plan is just a wish.” (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry). Write you dream down. Add a date. Make a plan. Take action. You’re capable of amazing things. Get out there and get it done!
Till next time dear reader, consider something you’ve always wanted to accomplish: make a plan, set a goal. (A SMART goal, now that you know all about them), and go do great things! <3 Tiff
