Time Management Tuesday: A Goal And Objectives Case Study

Author Nancy Tandon has been visiting some blogs recently in support of the publication of her new book, The Way I Say It, coming out, coincidentally, today. (Seriously, I was on retreat last week or I would have published this post then. This just happens to be happening today.) (Yeah, yeah, the stars must have lined up just right or something.) (*) On January 10, she visited Literary Rambles with her agent, Charlotte Wenger, where Nancy wrote about planning and goal setting.

As I'm sure you all recall, my last Time Management Tuesday post was about that very subject. If you scroll down toward the end of Nancy's post,  you'll see her objectives for her goal "To Get An Agent." Nancy did an interesting thing with her objectives. She assigned time frames for them. As in:

 "1.     Research conference with opportunities for feedback from agents (monthly)

   2.     Read at least two blog posts with agent interviews (weekly)."

Each of her six objectives included how often she was going to work on it. The value of something like that, in addition to whether or not it produces the desired goal, is that it makes objectives easily measurable. You can determine whether or not you're staying on task and how to get back on task. By going back to reading two agent interview blog posts a week, for example.

Feel as if assigning times to every objective for every goal would be overwhelming? Save those kinds of objectives for the major goals you're working on. For instance, unpublished writers who are finishing manuscripts would make that a major goal, while looking for an agent might not be on a goal list at all at that point. 

Creating goals, like everything else in managing time, is situational.

 

*Yes, I did read the most recent Murderbot novella last week. Murderbot loves parentheses. (In a way that seems annoying.) (And then grows on you.)