Thursday, January 12, 2012

A Goal By Any Other Name

Being that it's a new year, I thought I'd talk about goals. Real original, huh. When I think of goals, I think of those large yellow things cemented in at the end of footballs fields. They're not very moveable or adaptable, and if you're playing football chances are you going to get hurt reaching them.
I don't like goals.
And no, it's not about the pain; Life is a full contact sport. It's about the inflexibility of cementing something in place.
I don't do cement and I refuse to beat myself up because I didn't make an arbitrary thing. I have enough pressure in my life. Which is why I like sticky notes--you can move them around or remove them, ball them up and throw them away.
So how do I keep myself motivated?
I make lists of small bite-sized portions of a bigger thing that supplement a to-do list. For example, I have promised to deliver a paranormal romance by mid-March. To accomplish this I plan to write 150 pages a month for the next two months. That works out to 5 pages a day.
Do I force myself to write 5 pages a day?
No way! I give myself leave not to write some days. Given that I'm a procrastinator, this means that usually on the last week of the month I'll have to crank out 90 pages in seven days. I'm trying to do better.
I'm a work in progress.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ha. I never that about goals in regards to football. Now everytime I see you, I'm going to have those in mind! LOL. Love the sticky pad idea. Hmmm. Out of sight out of mind? 90 pages by the end of the month? I'm going to hold you to that. Can't wait to see what you got. Thanks for a thought-provoking post.

Linda Andrews said...

YOu can hold me to it, but you can't make me do it:-P I thought it was funny considering what yours was about yesterday. Maybe we've been CPs too long