Why We Fail At Achieving Our Writing Goals and What We Can Do About It
What are your writing goals for this month? Have you decided on your goals for September? Now that August is more than half over, did you get your goals accomplished? Are you on track to completing them all?
Before you start working on achieving your goals for September, let's take a step back for a few minutes.
Most likely you have some goals you didn't meet (yet). I know I do. One of my goals was to write or journal in a whole single notebook for the month of August. We're more than halfway through August, but I'm not even halfway through the notebook. My hand is sore already from handwriting (I'm a wuss, I know!).
The first week of August, I kept telling myself I would get to the journaling when I had a free moment or once I finished that thing I was working on. I wrote about two pages and then I waited until the 7th of August to pick it back up.
Why We Fail At Achieving Our Writing Goals
I didn't have a clear plan about how many pages I needed to write per day (even though the math is really simple) and I didn't have the journaling time in my schedule. I have a very busy schedule, so if an activity isn't on my schedule, it doesn't get done.
Does that happen to you?
So, when it comes to setting writing goals, first, we need goals that we can actually physically achieve and then we need a solid plan for achieving those goals.
It isn't enough to write down our goals on paper (or on the computer). We need an action plan to break those goals into actionable steps.
Why is it so hard to achieve our goals?
Part of the reason is that working toward them is unusual; it's not part of our schedule and we're not used to doing them. When something isn't part of our normal routine, it takes extra effort to do it and to turn it into a habit.
If it takes 21 days of consistency to create a habit, we have a lot of work ahead of us! We have to be determined and motivated and we must have a plan to achieve them.
The important part to remember is that we can do what we set out to achieve, if it's physically possible. So, whatever you believe, you can achieve.
Just give yourself the patience and the strength to allow it to happen, to take the baby steps, and to create a workable plan. We're capable of doing so much more than we give ourselves credit for.
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