Setting Goals

I’ve been taking a finance class at church and this week’s assignment was about goal setting. The goal setting the course wanted us to focus on was financial ones. Plan out the big purchases we knew we needed to make in the next few years. List out the purchases and figure out the amount we needed to save for that item. My husband and I are determined not to use debt (credit cards and loans) as a method of purchasing large items. (newer car, kitchen remodel, vacations, etc). Thinking about $25,000 for a kitchen remodel is depressing. My first thought was we’ll never save that much. But, breaking the cost down to years, and then into months, made our goal seem doable. Reachable.

 I decided to take that mindset and apply it to my writing projects. I know how many books I’d like (and need) to complete this year and broke those projects down by word count. Writing 2,000 words a day (1,000 each book) for 2 different works-in-progress made the goal of completing those books more doable in my mind. Well, I did give myself permission to change it up if I’m in ‘the zone’. Write 2,000 on one book, and the next day 2,000 on the other project.

When I focused on the big goal –writing three books this year– it put a bit of pressure on my muse. I felt overwhelmed, discouraged and headed toward failure … and the year has just started. All I could picture in my mind was thousands upon thousands of words in a mish-mash, thousands of blank pages I needed to place all those words on. Three books. In one year? Not going to happen. Then I split those books into separate goals, then divided each of those books into  smaller daily word goals. By looking at those daily goals, I realized it was possible. Achievable. It didn’t look so bad when I saw how many words a day I had to write.

This week I started my daily goals for my projects. At the beginning of the week, I write down the words count I want to write each day, for each project and check them off as they are completed. I find myself more relaxed when I write. I didn’t think I could write 300,000 words this year. But I know I can do 2,000 words a day.

Whether it’s paying off debt, saving for a large purchase, or completing a book, the end goal because more manageable when it’s looked at in smaller bits rather than as a whole.