So the New Year is 10 days old and I’m already hearing people have broken their NY resolutions. I’ve even seen it with my own eyes at the gym. Last week I had to wait for a few machines because all those people who vowed to lose weight and get in shape for 2018 were all gung-ho about hitting the gym every day and sweating the fat off. Fast forward to week 2 and most of those people are back to sleeping in and saying, “I’ll exercise later/tomorrow/never again.”
This is the reason I don’t make resolutions. It’s too easy to break ignore them.
Instead, as I’ve said before, I make a list of goals every year that I want to accomplish during that year and then make an action plan for those goals. Just saying, “I’m gonna hit the gym more this year,” doesn’t put any action behind the process. How often? When? What body areas are you going to center on? Those questions need to be asked and answered with a PLAN.
Remember the A-Team (the television show, not the horrible and lousy movie remake) and the line George Peppard always said when they finished a case? “I love when a plan comes together.”
Yeah. And, duh! What’s the significant word in that line? PLAN PLAN PLAN PLAN PLAN.
In order to have an effective plan, you need to define the actions to bring that plan to fruition. Once you do, you’ve formed your GOAL.
Seems common-sense-y, doesn’t it?
So, one of my goals this year was to get my life more organized. You might think since I have the luxury of being a full-time writer that there wouldn’t necessarily be a need to get organized. I mean, don’t I just write every day?
Yeah, but….
This year I wanted to set a goal for the number of books I’m going to write and for the number of blogs I want to do each week, so I bought a planner with one section devoted to PROJECTS. Here’s how my process goes:
- 5 days a week write a minimum of 2500 words daily in your current WIP. No less.
- On Sundays, writer your 2-3 blog posts for the week.
- Schedule your Social Media posts days ahead of time using Hootsuite. Book those posts on Sundays.
- Shut off the phone alerts and all SM alerts while performing #1
Now, if I write 2500 words minimum 5 days per week I’ll have 12,500 words written a week. My books usually range 75000-90000 words, and using this formula I can write a book in 7.2 weeks ( 90,000 words) That’s less than 2 months!!! Yowza. And I’m a good record keeper. This is the daily word count for a Christmas book I just sent to my editor for review:
REGINA daily word count
November 27, 2017 0 1064 1064
November 28, 2017 1064 1379 2443
November 29, 2017 2443 441 2884
December 4, 2017 2884 2517 5401
December 5, 2017 5401 1622 7023
December 6, 2017 7023 2468 9491
December 7, 2017 9491 2174 11665
December 10, 2017 11665 4307 15972
December 11, 2017 15972 2876 18848
December 12, 2017 18848 597 19445
December 13, 2017 19445 2301 21746
December 14, 2017 21746 1438 23184
December 18, 2017 23184 2448 25632
December 19, 2017 25632 2000 27632
December 20, 2017 27632 3138 30770
December 21, 2017 30770 1961 32731
January 1, 2018 32731 5482 38213
January 2, 2018 38213 2578 40791
January 3, 2018 40791 1275 42066
January 4, 2018 42066 3222 45288
January 5, 2018 45288 3812 49100
January 6, 2018 49100 3106 52206
January 7, 2018 52206 696 52890
Finished! 1.7.18 23 days and a total of 52,890 words. For me, this isn’t bad!
So, plan+action=goal.
Easy peasy.
When I’m not putting action behind my plans you can find me here, but only after I’ve written my daily 2500 word minimum!
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Peggy Jaeger, Author 