How to Set and Meet Goals

Every year around this time, the blogosphere erupts with New Year’s resolutions, goals, objectives as well as the various claims from those who adamantly reject New Year’s resolutions, but instead find other, more nuanced ways of describing their personal goals.  Let’s face it– goals are what keep us going.  We need to have something that we’re shooting for.  So why do so many New Year’s resolutions get left on the curb by early February?

I’ve found that, for me, goals can be either one of two things: incredibly productive or incredibly destructive.  Almost always, the factor that determines success is how achievable a goal is.  Sometimes (for instance when I’ve had too much coffee, or am still high from a nice long run) I make a goal that is unattainable. (Okay, that happens a lot.) The goal, in theory, could be achieved, but a lot of things I can’t control would have to go right in order for me to succeed.  These are the types of goals that can be destructive.  And the danger of piling a lot of unproductive goals in short succession is that you may begin to think that you aren’t capable of meeting your own expectations.  And this is far from the truth.

Just last night I taught a class to some of the junior officers in my command who are about to be considered for promotion, and instead of providing the list of things that they needed to do or not do to better their chances, I started with two specific points.  First– I asked them to recognize that there are a lot of things that are outside of their control.  They can’t control the timing and needs of the military, they can’t control how many people they are competing against, and they can’t control what assignments, experiences, and responsibilities their peers have been given.  Then, I asked them to consider the things that they can control–the work they do in the job they’ve been given, their attention to maintaining their personal military records, and most importantly, their attitude, effort, and professionalism.

This translated to my personal goals for this year so clearly.  There are a lot of things about this next year that I can’t control.  Recognizing what we can and can’t control helps us to better define our goals and understand what we can reasonably expect from ourselves.  Here are some examples.

Workload.  For us part-time writers, we usually can’t control the amount of work our real jobs throw at us.  We need to consider this when we make our goals– they have to be reasonable.  It is not reasonable for me to expect that I can write, or promote, or blog, or edit every single day.  If I make a goal that requires this commitment in order to succeed, I’ve set an unrealistic, unproductive and maybe even destructive goal.  If I choose to make this type of goal, I need to recognize that something else will have to be neglected in order for me to achieve it.  Some things I can neglect (running).  Some things I can’t (feeding the kids).  I have to be realistic about these balances.

Exhaustion.  (This may or may not be directly related to workload, but think about how it fits into your schedules and writing routines.) When I think about my day and how I’m going to fit in all of my activities, writing almost always is the last thing I pencil in.  I usually stay motivated right about until 9:00pm, where I start to fall apart.  During my morning cup of coffee, I have great confidence that in 14 hours I’m going to feel just as awesome as I do at that moment, but that’s almost never the case.  Since I began my deployment, I’ve worked about 13-15 hours a day.  It is unreasonable for me to expect that I’m going to be chipper at the end of a workday to start a new chapter or develop a new marketing campaign.  Hell, I can’t even muster the thumb strength to tweet.  So I manage myself in a world that I can’t really control.  (We’ll get to some of these management techniques in a minute).

When others are going to need me.  More often than not, right about the time when I’m getting ready to sit down to write, someone will need me for something. And it will seem like an emergency to them, even though it’s not an emergency to me (see my previous blog on boxing out for your time when, for some unknown reason, you are the only one in the house capable of locating the mustard.) But sometimes there are real priorities.  For me–FaceTiming with the fam.  They are ready to chat usually about the time I am playing rock-paper-scissors between my left and right hand to decide if I’m going to crash or try to eek out a few hundred words.  I can’t control when my time will be better spent doing something that is a higher priority, particularly when there are people in my family, in my job, in my life that depend on me for a lot of different things.  On the plus side, it’s nice to be needed.

Great.  So where does this leave us?  For me, it reminds me that I have to recognize what I can control, make reasonable goals for myself, and I have to maximize my management techniques and maximize those in-between moments.  I have to be ready to steal them back whenever I can.  So what are my coping mechanisms?

Prepping the environment. I never leave a writing session at the end of a chapter. Sounds a little odd, but I’ve found that it takes so much more mental energy to start a chapter from the beginning when I am picking up the project cold.  It’s easy to start in the middle of a stream of ideas that are already hatched.  My usual writing rhythm goes something like this.  Write/finish the initial verbiage of a chapter, start the next, stop.  This gives me a few options when I pick up the project again.  I can either continue the chapter that I’ve begun or finesse the chapter that I just finished– all depending on how I feel when I pick up the work again.  If the environment is prepped, I can give myself multiple ways to engage with my work.

Boxing Out.  If you’ve read any of my previous blogs, you know that I talk about “boxing out” and “capture the in-between moments” all the time.  This basically means that, for the time that you are able to devote solely to writing, protect it.  Sometimes things come up, yes, but set parameters for what you will and won’t interrupt your work for.  Severed limbs?  Probably okay to cheat on this one and leave the iPad to look for a tourniquet.  Husband can’t find the remote?  Probably okay to ask him to solve it himself.  You get the idea.  The point is that you have to protect the time you have.

Setting Reasonable Goals.  You didn’t think we’d ever get here, did you?  So, even for my daily work, I try to set a reasonable goal.  Write a blog, schedule a promotion event, finish a chapter and start a new one.  Word count isn’t usually a metric I care about.  I care about forward motion.  Maybe if writing becomes more than a part-time gig someday, I will get to the point where I can hold myself to word count goals, but I’m not there yet.  If I set a reasonable goal for myself each day, I can compile small “wins”, set a precedent for meeting expectations, and increase my confidence in what I can actually accomplish with each 24-hour day I am given.

Setting reasonable goals translates past the day-to-day to the more long-term goals.  If you are someone who is open to New Year’s resolutions, be reasonable.  Set goals that can be productive and not destructive.  Recognize what you can and can’t control, and then go after what you can control with as much enthusiasm as you can muster (and… prep your environment and remember to box out!).  These are the things that you can control! Believe it or not, even the example of enthusiasm is empowering to others and is empowering to yourself.  I meet so many people who want to take up writing, and I’ve found that when I am enthusiastic about my goals and my small successes, they begin to realize that they can do it too.  And that is so, so cool.

A little long-winded today, but…

…until next time, keep scribbling.