In my Brainstorm e-bulletin I
mentioned that we’re nearing the final quarter of the year—a good time to take
stock of how you’re doing with any writing goals you set for yourself at the
start of the year. Better to do it now and adjust your activity as necessary,
than to get to the end of the year and realize that, once again, we’ve not
quite lived up to our own expectations.
Here’s a quick way to do this: first, list the writing goals you had at the start of the year. Second, estimate what percentage of this goal you’ve reached. Here’s part of my scorecard so far:
Write my “24 Hours” novel: 50%
Fitness: 80%
Reorganization of office & flat: 40%
Write my new non-fiction, creative
marketing book: 100%
Marketing goals for the “Focus:
the power of targeted thinking” book: 60%
Third, decide what you want to do in the final quarter of the year to address the situation. For instance, have a period of three weeks coming up that I’m going to dedicate to working only on the novel.
My suggestion is that if you don’t have enough time to get to 100% on all the goals, pick the most important one and commit to getting that one done. You’ll gain more by finishing one than partly-finishing three.
If you need some help with time management, check out my ebook on time management for writers and other creative people--it's in the ebook section at www.timetowrite.com.