Behind On Your 2024 Writing Goals? Let’s Reboot Them Now!
Don't miss our five tips to help you refocus on your goals and achieve them!
With the halfway point of 2024 right around the corner, now is a great time to take stock of your goal progress for the year. If you’re behind, don't worry. You're not alone! We often plan our goals from a “best possible situation” mindset. This means we go into each year envisioning that everything goes our way, there are no bumps in the road, and we’ll have everything we need to achieve our goals. In reality, however, we could get sick, we could lose someone we love, or we could have to take on a responsibility we weren’t aware of when we made our goals list.
The good news is that it's never too late to reboot your goals. We aren’t tied to the calendar when setting and achieving goals.
In this article, we'll explore some tips and strategies to help you get back on track and achieve your writing goals for 2024.
Take a Look at Your Time Management
First up, take a look at how you manage your time. Take a few minutes to analyze your days. Where do you spend your time? Do you have pockets of time in your day you could use to write? To reboot your goals, look for things you do during the day that could be replaced with writing.
Here are a few examples:
While you wait in the car line to pick up your kids, take a notebook (or your laptop) and write.
Instead of watching TV five nights a week, write for three nights a week and watch TV the other two nights.
Wake up an hour earlier and use the quiet time to write.
Stay up an hour later each night to write
Use half of your lunch break to write.
Take a weekend for a writing retreat to make significant progress.
Get Outside
I know when my is brain buzzing with too many thoughts and a to-do list a mile long it tends to nag at me and staunch my creative flow. When this happens, I like to get outside and soak up some sunshine on a walk. This always helps me refocus and decompress. Then, I can come back to my desk and regroup. That little boost of sunshine always helps me see my priorities in a new light.
Go for a walk, take a hike, spend some time by the water, or simply sit outside in the sunshine for a few minutes to decompress and refocus.
Revamp Priorities to Start Incorporating Your Goals
It’s important to tend to our responsibilities, but we also need to make sure we create room to tackle our passions and personal goals. If you want to write a book, you’ll need to treat it like a responsibility you cannot ignore. Take a look at your list of priorities and decide when, where, and how you’ll commit to incorporating your writing goals.
Make a 1-3-5 Rule To-Do List
If you’re basic to-do list isn’t cutting it and you find you keep rolling certain tasks to another day, consider creating a 1-3-5 rule to-do list. With this to-do list, you’ll set one big goal, three medium goals, and five small goals for each day. You have the flexibility to decide if your writing tasks are going to be big, medium, or small tasks for each day.
Let Yourself Be Bored a Little Bit
Let’s face it, sometimes the reason we don’t reach our writing goals is because we’re feeling uninspired. So, I encourage you to give your brain some space to be bored. We’re all on information overload throughout the day with emails, texts, the news, and other notifications. It can be hard to silence all the chatter.
Take time to intentionally slow down and allow yourself to be bored. Let your mind wander. Take in your surroundings. By doing this, you can tap into your creativity and generate new ideas.
Final Thoughts
It’s never too late to reboot your writing goals. Give yourself time to take a step back, evaluate your time management, rework your priorities, create a 1-3-5 to-do list, and allow yourself to be bored, so you can achieve your writing goals this year.