Less is More - Be Accountable for the Goals You've Set

Every year I set new year’s resolutions. Sometimes I do them, sometimes I don't. 

This year I decided to be more realistic about what I wanted to achieve in 2015.

 I published a couple of posts on goal setting at the start of the year:

Ideas are powerful, ideas change your world

Ten Reasons to Train Yourself to be Goal Orientated 

How Do You Decide What Goals To Set? 

My New Year’s Resolution was a theme: Less is more

I broke this vision down into longer term objectives:

I broke this down further into more specific tasks:

At the end of the first quarter of this year I'm taking stock...

When you set goals it's important to monitor your progress. 

Here are the specific things I have achieved so far and the progress I have made towards the objectives:

More: Writing. Fiction and Non-Fiction:

• Finish first draft of Gabriel's Game, Part 1: The White Queen by end Feb - completed
• Finish proofing process by end April - in progress
• Complete re-writes by mid-May
• Publish June 

• Complete first draft of Gabriel's Game, Part 2: The Black Knight by end June - in progress

 

 

• Publish 1 non-fiction book by the end of the year - I've now almost completed the first draft of 'Operation Author: So You've Published a Book, Now What?' so I'm bringing this forward by 6 months

More: Marketing activities for my writing:

I need to do more here and be more organised. 

I have seen an increase in book sales this quarter so what ever I've been doing is working. I need to set some goals around monitoring my marketing efforts.

More: Relationship development, online & offline:

In the first three months of this year I've been to more events and made more connections than I have for a while. This is related to marketing activities and undoubtedly has led to increased sales. I've also picked up contacts for other opportunities to build into my authorpreneur business.

2015 is Authorpreneur Almanac year. 

Join me in my 365 Adventures in Writing and Entrepreneurship...

More: Exercise and Less: Food and booze:

I have to confess, I've done badly here. I've been so focused on work and writing that I've not made time to exercise and being busy and stressed always leads to me eating and drinking more.

The first step to setting goals is to acknowledge them. I need to plan my meals better and take my physical health more seriously.

The first step; myself and a friend are considering Race for Life in the summer so I need to put a training regime into place.

Less days at work:

I had a conversation with my boss about reducing my hours back in January. At the time, the business I work with as a day job couldn't accommodate. However, a change in business circumstances has opened up an opportunity for me to reduce my hours. This starts in April. - Completed

Less Distractions:

I have spoken to a friend of mine that I was involved with writing network with and bowed out gracefully. I found that I haven't had the time to dedicate to the network and it was a distraction - completed

Here's my 5 Top Tips to stay motivated to achieve those goals:

1. Regularly evaluate your practice - What's going well? What's not going well?
2. Review your goals - Have I allowed enough time? Have I been realistic about what I am able to achieve? Do I need  extra help?
3. Priorities will change - keep on top of them by looking at your list of goals strategically and asking yourself what you should be doing next. It could be different to what you anticipated a few weeks ago as other opportunities or challenges have arisen
4. Remind yourself what you have achieved instead of fixating on the things you haven't done yet. This is only the first quarter of the year, now I can see how much I've done and remind myself of the steps long forgotten, I feel like I'm making progress
5. Break down the goals further into smaller sub-goals to make them more achievable

 Have you stuck to your New Year's Resolutions?