So tonight I finally put my writing goals and objectives up on the white board in my office to help gauge my progress and needless to say, I’ve got a busy year ahead of me.
Even though I know that I sometimes get too wrapped up in productivity to the point where I’m inadvertently causing myself more warm than good, I feel the need to add a little more structure to what I’m trying to do because there are so many facets right now that otherwise I don’t think I’d be able to keep track of them all. When I look up at the board beside me, I see a lot of different things on my plate this year, but I don’t necessarily think that it’s an unreasonable amount. They’re there because I think that’s what I need to accomplish this year to move my business forward, and if everything goes right, hopefully next year I’ll be creating an entirely new list to focus on as opposed to carrying over stuff that didn’t get done in 2011…
That said, I think the biggest frustration that I have to work through so far is that I don’t necessarily want to work on what I have scheduled to work on right now! Now last year I was working under the philosophy that I should just work on whatever I’m in the mood for at that moment because there’s no use wasting time on something I’m not feeling, but the problem with that is … several of the things on my list for this year were technically carry-overs from last year. See, I’d dive in and spend a good, solid weekend working on something, then change directions the following week and do something completely different, so not only did the first thing not actually get done, no doubt things will have slightly changed when I finally end up circling back to it and I’ll have to spend more time tweaking and deciphering the first pass instead of just doing it completely the first time!
Case in point – I have a Disney-related project that I’ve been trying (in vain) to get launched for several years now. I think I finally know what I want to do with it, but right now there are at least three or four other things in line before I’m letting myself work on that one. Worse yet, we might be going over to Orlando tomorrow and I always get ramped up about working on this while and after I’m there, but as much as I’d like to just hop over and start writing away on that one, there’s a reason why it’s located in the list where it is. It’s more important for my business to get these other things done first, no matter how much more fun the Disney project sounds right this second because otherwise, all the work that I’ve done on my current project goes to waste instead!
So anyways, I think it’s going to be interesting to see how this plays out over the next year. It seems simple enough to make sense, and frankly, I hope it works out because getting all of this stuff done would be a big leap forward for my business! All I do know for sure is that my leap-frog method of working last year only got me so far – hopefully less juggling and more focus on individual projects will be a good change of direction. We’ll see…