Comments on: Goals

By: Mur Lafferty

Mur Lafferty — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 13:38:29 +0000

Rob- I did say so before – I said it in the podcast.

By: Robert Grant

Robert Grant — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 17:45:41 +0000

Wotcha

I was once told, in no uncertain terms, that if you tell me *before*, it’s a reason, if you tell me *after*, it’s an excuse. It hurt at the time (I was young and I looked-up to this guy) but I’ve always remembered it so, if you tell us why you’re going to miss your target beforehand we’ll treat it as a reason and cut you some slack, but if you fail miserably and tell us afterwards then it’s just an excuse and…..well, if you don’t actually get your butt in the chair and your fingers on the keyboard then it doesn’t matter how you re-organise your goals, you still won’t hit them.

Hey I’m not having a go, I’m as lousy as anyone at actually doing the work, but I recognise that spending time re-organising my goals – again – is time I should be using trying to reach the original one….by writing.

Cool blog though.

Cheers!

Rob

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 06:55:02 +0000

Sometimes you just have a bad goals month. I did a couple of months ago when I tried to do too much at once and failed on pretty much all of them. Since then I’ve simplified and focused on the most important ones.

But the main thing is to have goals. Even if you fail on them sometimes the fact you have them at all makes you more likely to achieve those things than someone who doesn’t set down those goals.

By: Joanna Penn

Joanna Penn — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 02:28:04 +0000

Thanks for the shout out Mur! You achieve so many goals regularly – you are a writing machine! (and an inspiration to us lesser mortals!)
I am already focussing on NaNoWriMo as a time when I will get a massive chunk of my first fiction novel done. A daunting task after so much non-fiction! But you have to get that first one out of the way don’t you!
Happy Goal Achieving Day!

Joanna

By: Arioch

Arioch — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 01:58:43 +0000

Sounds very similar to what I learned when I was in officer training for firefighting. Kind of strange how some things cross over into nearly all aspects of life Breaking large goals down into smaller pieces is essential towards achieving your final objective. It also helps if you are able to look at them with an objective (rather than subjective) means of measuring whether you have succeeded in achieving them or not.

If you fail one day, bump that goal to the next day. Don’t try to do two days at once or you are setting yourself up to fail. Life is going to throw you curves sometimes. Try to allow for a few of those when you lay out your long term timeline and you’ll be fine. It’s easy to get focused off in the distance and screw the pooch short term. If you keep your eyes on what you’re doing, you wind up being done before you know it. Sounds odd, but it works for me.