It's that time of year: goal setting time. And truth: I love goals! I love the feeling of setting challenges, tasks, mapping a road plan for getting somewhere that I am not. I love thinking "what else could I do?" and stretching to see if it's achieveable.
BUT.
I don't always achieve what I set out to do. Sometimes I bite off more than I can chew, sometimes I feel like my feet are being held underwater, and sometimes I get frustrated by the lack of control I have over what I want to achieve. I tend to believe that hard work and determination can get us where we want to go, but there ARE external factors that we can't do a thing about. Even if I take the time to write a new series proposal and submit it to my agent, that doesn't guarantee that it will sell. (She smartly advises about the difference between goals and objectives here.)
Toward the end of 2016 I discovered a new way to think about goals in 90-day windows. This works for me. My goals fall into four categories: writing, promotion, SinC, and personal, and now when I think of something to add to my list, I can very quickly know if I can get it done by March 15 (I started this on Dec 15), drop it into the March 16-June 15 window, or one of the two quarters after that. Already I feel like my productivity is laser-focused and every morning when I wake up, I'm eager to get out of bed and work on that day's project (which is huge for me because I don't like to get up in the mornings!)
The 90-Day Year concept came to me via Todd Herman, and if you go on his mailing list, you can find out more about it here. I seem to have been lucky enough to discover him when he was gearing up for a new class so I was able to watch his free training videos.
Here's hoping we all have productive 2017s!