How do you decide what goals to set?

For my next installment of 

The Authorpreneur Almanac:

365 Adventures in Writing and Entrepreneurship

I'm still on the subject of goal setting. 

How do you decide what goals to set for yourself?

The Vision: 

Ask yourself where you'd like to be in future. What does success mean to you? What does it look and feel like? It will be different for everyone. Allow yourself to daydream for a moment. Think big but not massive, the point is to change your own reality, not the world.

For me it's about freedom. It's about using my writing as a gateway to travel, live wherever I like and not be tied to someone else's schedule (except perhaps the airline's). It's about exploring my creativity, sharing it and enabling others, through those experiences, while still able to have a few luxuries and not to worry about comfortable shelter and good food.

Ask yourself what you are passionate about? If you didn't have to think about money or responsibilities, what would you do with your life? This is a great starting point to establish a clear vision. For you it could be music, or art, or games, or food etc.

Don't burden yourself with questions of why, or how, just imagine it and focus on it. However it is important to be practical and pragmatic and to accept that it will never be what you expect or what you want right now. 

It will change as you grow, develop and learn but that in no way diminishes having a vision for the visions own sake.

Themes:

Are there different elements to the vision? Are there multiple routes to get there? Identify the possible paths that could take you there, but be sensible and realistic - winning the lottery is not allowed to be on your list. Only pick one theme, you can choose another one once you finish the first.

This Way:

Choose a path that you can break down into lots of small tasks. You can't do all of them and shouldn't beat yourself up about it, the point is regular, focused, action. Sweat the small stuff in this case, less is more and one last cliché just to slam the point home (see what I did there) it reminds me of the old adage; 'Look after the pennies and the pounds look after themselves.'

 

Daily actions:

Here are some examples of small, simple actions that I completed during Operation Author:

·   Scheduled plenty of tweets up to the New Year so I don't have to think about it over the Christmas break.

I also completed NaNoWriMo

My third action was to order copies of the book - they'll be delivered mid October.


How do you decide what to prioritise?