Goals and Priorities and Bears, Oh My!

“Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.” Peter Drucker

The first thing when starting a new endeavor is to set goals and priorities. Now that I’m actually sitting in this space, with the freeway humming outside my window and Snapple chilling in the fridge, I have to think about what I want to accomplish here. I can't just sit at the desk and mutter dementedly. I can do that at home.


Here are some neat thoughts on the importance of planning.

MY WRITING GOALS

STEP A
List your top priorities for the coming quarter. What three things to you want to have accomplished three months from now? Is there a conference you want to present at? A proposal you want to win? A deal you want to close?

Name those three accomplishments and list them as your priority this week.

I have three major goals for the next five months, which will take me through the rest of this quarter and through the second quarter. My writing year begins Jan. 1, so the first half ends June 30.  You could argue that June will be kind of a wash, since I’ll be traveling so much, but I can still work on my writing priorities even if I’m spending little time in the studio.

My three major goals for first half 2015 are blogging, memoir and short pieces/stories.


GOAL ONE: Blogging

Post in my Stealth Life blog, Killer Robots blog and California Dreaming blog at least three times a week. I hope to do it every day, but let’s start with three days a week.

GOAL TWO: Memoir

Finish this memoir by June 30. No matter how ridiculous, out-of-date and Frankenstein’s Monster this memoir turns out to be, I will NOT go through another summer without finishing it.

GOAL THREE: Short pieces/stories

I can’t commit to writing another novel until I finish that damn memoir (see above), but I want to keep my fiction muscle working. So I will write short writing prompts and stories. I can work on my mind-reading politician story, but only as a daily writing prompt.

STEP B
List three tangible steps you can take on each top priority to move it toward completion.
If your thoughts run toward the mathematical, you’ll know that having three tasks for three priorities means that you’ve just created nine separate goals for each week. That could sound as if you’re creating work for yourself rather than lessening it. But there’s a reason we’re breaking work down this way, which you will see in section #3.

Blogging three times a week
- Write life blog post for Stealth Life, then revamp it for California Dreaming
- Write writing blog post for Stealth Life, then maybe revamp it for Killer Robots
- Always look for art to accompany it

Finish Memoir
- read through current draft
- plan out how will structure rest of memoir
- read Anne Lamott’s “picture frame” advice when you get scared and try to write a little piece at a time.

Write short pieces/stories
- write at least 1,000 words every day
- Flag prompts that could be developed further
- Write and edit short stories



STEP C
Commit at least two hours on studio days and one hour on newsroom days to your priorities. Newsroom days should at minimum include a 1,000-word writing prompt. If you have time left over, write a blog post, edit a story or do a one-inch picture frame on memoir. 


STEP D
Ask yourself at the start of your writing time, “How will I accomplish this?” Take the direct and precise action that will achieve your goal.

Be specific in your tasks. Rather than “work on funding for next year’s workshop,” instead, work out the steps you need to take to get funding, such as finding sponsors and getting a grant.

Tasks include scheduling a meeting with best sponsorship lead, telling him or her the latest good news about your project, with a request for a meeting; specifying the sponsorship you’re seeking in writing; and completing at least one section of the grant proposal.

Each phone call you make, each page of the proposal you’ve written, is a strike-through on your long list of tasks—a list that is now becoming shorter.