It’s a fresh year my friends! That means new calendars and new chances.
Did you set any New Year’s resolutions?
I’m a huge sucker for goals- I love setting them, I love talking about them, I get way too excited and scare people away by asking them too many questions about their Goals and Dreams and other Big Things.
I’ll try not to scare you too much today. 😉
But goals are awesome!
Goals are exciting because they give us a chance to dream and they give us a way to make those dreams a reality.
How can we beat that?
I’ve talked about goals before but it’s worth coming back to because that’s how we make progress. I’m really good at forgetting what I’m doing and getting distracted by shiny things, so repetition is good.
Speaking of getting distracted, how many times have we set goals and then forgotten all about them? I bet I’m not the only one. Is this a problem with the goals or is it user error?
Well… potentially a bit of both. So today we’re looking both at how to create good goals and also how to use them effectively. Let’s jump in!
Creating Good Goals
Having just any old goals isn’t good enough- I want the best for us!
After all, if our goals shape where we’re going then we should take the time to make sure we’re headed in the right direction.
Comprehensive Goals
It’s important to realize that we are complex beings who don’t exist in a vacuum. Our goals should reflect that.
We may be writers, but we likely have things we care about outside of our writing.
We also have friends, families, jobs, pets, homes, bills, and bank accounts. Our physical health is important but just as important (if not more so!) is our mental, emotional, and spiritual health.
There are many aspects of our lives that are important.
If we make goals only addressing our physical health (like the stereotypical New Year’s resolution to get in shape) we’re missing out on all the other aspects of our lives. Likewise, if our goals only address our writing then we’re neglecting other things.
Yes, we should have writing goals. (Yay for writing!)
But it’s also definitely worthwhile to think about what we’d like to see happen over the next year regarding our family, friends, work, home, etc.
It can be overwhelming to make a million goals about every aspect of our lives so don’t go crazy on me- we can limit ourselves to a few top priority things to focus on. The important bit is to identify what these priorities are.
Maybe over the next year you want to focus on your family relationships and personal mental health. Maybe you want to improve physical health and your financial situation. I hope your writing is on the list somewhere too, but I understand if other things come first. You know yourself and your situation better than I do.
Making our goals work for us requires they reflect who we are and what we want.
Smart Goals
Beyond having a comprehensive focus for our goals, we need goals that lead to action.
We don’t want generic and easily pushed aside goals. Instead, we want goals that lead to results and to growth.
We need goals that identify what we really want- not what other people want us to want.
SMART is one acronym to walk us through creating good goals and there are other formats out there as well. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (among other things depending on who is teaching it).
The idea is that by using this guideline we can identify and form goals that are defined and actionable instead of vague and forgettable.
And action is what we want, right? Who wants a forgettable goal?
For example, instead of having a goal to “write more” we could say “I will write half an hour each day” or “I will write ten pages a week.”
These second examples are things we can take action to accomplish because they are more precise and actionable goals.
With this framework we can create long term goals- like what we want to accomplish by the end of the year- and we can also break it down quarterly, month by month, or even more in order to create short term goals that will lead us to accomplish our long term plans.
This could look like, “By the end of the year I want to finish revising my novel and send it to at least 1 agent with a query letter.”
Next we can break it down a bit, “By the end of March (the first quarter) I will have finished this round of revisions on my novel and will send it to beta readers.”
Break it down even more and we could get into what we want to accomplish each day, week, or month.
This may seem like overkill but what we’re doing is turning our goal into an actionable plan. It’s not something vague. It’s not a “sometime later when I have more time” sort of a goal.
This is happening and now we have a good idea of what we want to see happen when.
Try brainstorming what these goals would look like with your own writing and with some of the other spheres of your life you’ve identified as important to you. What do you want to see happen in the next year and what will that look like moving forward? Everyone’s goals will look different and that’s good!
Using our goals
Shifting gear a bit, it’s time to chat about how we want to actually use these shiny new goals that we’re creating. Cause it’s all well and good to have a defined and actionable goal for the year that talks about everything we want to accomplish- it’s another thing entirely to actually follow this plan.
Life doesn’t go according to plan super frequently. We get sick, money is tight, kids are kids, jobs are hard… it’s complicated. Which makes it tricky to drag our goals and plans into it sometimes.
Have grace
The first thing to remember is GRACE.
There’s a reason I link goals and grace together here on my blog.
Without grace for ourselves it’s far too easy to get down on ourselves when we inevitably fall short of where we’d like to be.
Without grace, failure or even minor setbacks can be overwhelming.
But they don’t need to be.
The thing is, we all make mistakes.
We all mess up and we all will fail again and again. (I’m a perfectionist by nature so this one is REALLY hard for me to be okay with. But I’m working on it.)
Our goals won’t work out sometimes. This should be the understanding from the beginning and shouldn’t surprise us.
WHEN this happens (and it is a when, not an if) we can then reevaluate our goals. We can adjust our plans. We can take stock of where we’re at and where to go next.
And then we keep moving forward.
We might not be moving very fast, my friends. I feel like I’m moving at a snail’s pace on so many days.
But I’m still moving. As long as we don’t give up, we’ll get there eventually. And I’ll take eventually over never.
That’s what grace gives us- the understanding that it’s okay to fall down and it’s not the end. That we are still lovely and valuable individuals even if we’ve messed up again and again.
We can believe in our ability to try again.
I believe in grace for you, my friend.
Believe it for yourself.
Regular Reevaluations
The last things that help us succeed with our goals is to have regular reminders of where we’re going. This is similar to checking the map/gps periodically when traveling. We want to make sure we’re staying on track and that we don’t forget where we’re going.
I like to evaluate my goals for the week every Sunday to give myself an idea of where my week is going. This keeps me focused and also gives me a chance to see what’s working and what’s not working in my own habits and work. I know people who look at their goals monthly or quarterly. Find what works for you.
So there you have it, some guidelines on setting goals for the new year that can lead us to success and growth instead of frustration.
Every one of us will approach and think about goals a bit different because each and every one of us is different. Different things will work for each one of us and that’s the beauty of it!
These frameworks should give us a solid base for making goals that work for us regardless of where we’re at. Let’s make this next year a great one!
What about you?
Are your goals feeling comprehensive and smart? How are you doing with grace for yourself?
As you may have guessed, I could talk about goals all day long. 😉 Feel free to share your goals for the year below in the comments, or shoot me a message if you have question or want to chat more!
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