Time Management Tuesday: Checking On This Year's Goals And Objectives

Remember those goals and objectives we all created for this year back on New Year's Day? Yes? Hmm? Well, we're at the halfway point in the year. It's time to check in with them to see how we're doing, which goals and objectives we've completed, which ones we're working, which ones we want to focus upon in the next few months, which ones we need to tweak, and, possibly, which ones we should be eliminating altogether.

Goal 1. Publish Saving the Planet eBook at the end of January. It was published in February, but it has been published.

Goal 2. Publicize Saving the Planet throughout the year. To date, I have visited several hundred blogs and environmental sites looking for appropriate spots to contact regarding reviews. I've only contacted between 30 and 40 because of that "appropriate" issue. Many bloggers do not accept self-published books or do not accept eBooks or focus on a specific genre or are no longer accepting books for review at all. The Internet attention the book has received, to date, is archived at my website. I continue to collect sites to contact and try to e-mail a few each week. I'm also pulling together sites that are interested in guest posts and working on some guest post ideas to pitch to them. Various marketing efforts will continue until at least the end of the year.

Goal 3. Maintain Time Management Tuesday project. I had four objectives for this goal:

1. Continue Tuesday posts at least twice a month during this second year.  Except for two Tuesdays, I believe I've managed weekly posts, which included two special multi-week projects, one on willpower and one on meditation. I'm planning a summer reading project for TMT in the coming months.
2. Read The Power of Habit  Done
3. Plan NESCBWI time management workshop for May. Workshop planned and conducted.
4. Look for opportunities to write on the subject. I hope to combine this objective with Goal 2, creating a guest post that will help publicize the Saving the Planet & Stuff eBook.

Goal 4. Submission Binge I have four objectives for this goal:

1. Plan a month or two period to do revisions and submit, probably September and October  I did a binge in March  that wasn't all that successful. I made only 3 submissions, 2 of which I'm still waiting on. But I can try for another month this fall.
2. Look for markets in the months leading up to that point. I'd like to start making a little market research for short fiction/nonfiction a regular weekend practice. No success with that yet. I did do some reading during my March Madness binge and frequently posted links to favorite finds at my professional Facebook page.
3. By July have one or two old stories selected and be working on them to make use of "archived" material. I actually did a revision of one of the stories I submitted. It was some of the most satisfying writing I've done in a long time.

Goal 5. Write and submit an essay on blogging. I have ideas for two blogging essays now. This is still a viable goal.

Goal 6. Work on an outline for "mummy book" during May Days. Three objectives:

1. Finish reading Wired for Story because I think we organic writers often don't know what our story is prior to writing, which makes plotting difficult. Done prior to May
2. At least skim The Plot Whisperer for same reason Did this during May and just finished it maybe a week ago.
3. Go over old research for this project and continue with more. Got a lot done on this

I made a lot of profess on this goal. I'd like to get one specific plot point resolved, before trying to move on with the project.

Goal 7. Continue with community building. I had eight objectives for this goal, all of which I've addressed to some extent. Most recently I have created a method here at the blog so that readers can get to the Connecticut Children's Literature Calendar at any time and I've applied to attend a writers' retreat this fall.

Goal 8. Publish a free Hannah and Brandon e-short story to support the Hannah and Brandon eBooks published by G.P. Putnam's Sons. Earlier this year I decided that if I write a new Hannah and Brandon short story, I'll try to publish it traditionally. This could be worked in with the Submission Binge goal.

Goal 9. Plan publication of My Life Among the Aliens and Club Earth eBooks for winter, 2014.
By February I was already having second thoughts about this goal. I'm definitely putting it off. The Saving the Planet & Stuff eBook isn't doing well enough at this point to justify the big investment of time it would take to publish more eBooks this coming winter. I do have the rights back to Club Earth now, which was one of my objectives for this goal, and I can always put this entire goal into play sometime in the future.

Over the next six months, I would much rather work on the following:

New Goal A. Revising Becoming Greg and Emma for adult readers.

New Goal B. Working on a first draft of "The Mummy" book.

New Goal C. Begin researching agents for adult work who might be interested in Greg and Emma.

Okay, so do we all feel we've made good use of our time so far? Do we all know what to focus our time upon for the rest of the year?