Time for a goal check-in!
In January, I opted to break away from the Bi-Monthly goals and introduced a new goal system. As you may recall, it was a goal system defined by Sarrah Cannon in her YouTube video How To Make 2019 Your Best Year Yet.
The essence of her system revolves around Main Goals, Projects, and Tasks. You set two or three “main” general priority goals to focus on. Then you break down those goals by deciding on Projects that will accomplish those general Main Goals. With each Project Goal, you detail and define what Tasks you are taking to get the Project finished.
Here are the goals I worked up for the first quarter:
My MAIN GOALS are as follows:
- Increase my site visitors by 25% = 232 visitors — (2018 1st Quarter’s results were 186 visitors) ACTUAL RESULT: 243 visitors (Success!)
- Complete one of three books for the year 2019 ACTUAL RESULT: Published Elude: Part Three the first week of April (Partial success).
PROJECT GOALS are as follows:
Goal to Increase Site Visits —
- Three Monthly Giveaways
- Two Book-signings
- Weekly Blog Posts
Goal to One of Three Books for 2019 —
- Write & Publish Elude Part Three
TASK GOALS to Increase Site Visits as follows:
- Develop three unique site giveaways (signed book copies, amazon cards, audiobooks)
- One Book-signing set in January (Superhero Saturday); call and set up another for February or March
- Update each week a blog post (web sagas, goal-setting blogs, etc) for a total of at least 12 blogs in the 90 days.
TASK GOALS to Complete Elude Part Three as follows:
- Complete Bullet Outline
- Write the rough draft (30,000-word count left)
- Go through 3 waves of edits
- Cover & Blurb (already completed)
- Publish on Kindle & Amazon by 3/31/19
While I did accomplish my goals, I felt like the extra month gave me too much leeway — gave me an out and I was not as “driven or pushed” as I have been with the Bi-Monthly goal system.
A couple positives did come out of the trial run: I was able to get a weekly blog done for the three months which was a nice plus and also I increased my site traffic by almost 31% versus the 25% I was shooting for.
So… I may not have felt like I was productive, I did accomplish some objectives. That being said, I’m going to try to do a combination of the two systems and see if that works for me.
First I am going to set myself five Main Goals that are a bit more specific than the general “Main Goals” as with Cannon’s approach. Also, I am going to give myself a bit of an established timeline completion date (not a deadline but more of an expectation).
MAIN FOR APRIL & MAY GOALS:
- Complete the outline for the third book in the Wyvernshield Series (possibly titled Swimming in the Ashes). Due date by May 15th.
- Complete the outline for the new horror web saga (no title yet). Due date by April 30th.
- Complete the outline for the new Evade Series (crime/horror series). Due date by May 31st.
- Rework the covers of my books. (I have been hit over the head several times by more successful authors that my books were not cohesive or didn’t express the right genres. “If you confuse the reader immediately, they will not bother figuring it out and move on.” I write in two genres so I’m going to have to do a better job at making it more obvious.) Due date by May 31st.
- Begin a four-part guest blog swap with fellow writer Adam Mitchell and complete a Blog Interview with him! (This will be my first ever blog swap and should be a lot of fun!) Started by April 15th – the interview and First Blog on May 1st.
My April & May months may only 5 goals for the Bi-Monthly system which usually had 10, but these are some tough objectives and come with imminent goal dates. And along the way, I want to get a video done for my fantasy series as I watched several videos on book trailer production and think I’m up to it…but where can I get in that extra time?
WISH ME LUCK!
The Official Website of Author Derek Barton 