Making Mini-Plans and Mini-Goals for the Year

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Happy 2022! Today, I’m talking about plans and goals. For ages, I just set a mid-year goal instead of a New Year goal. June was a better time of the year for me to be quiet and think about reasonable goals for the next 12 months. The chaos of early-January, when I still had school-aged kids at home with me during their holiday break, just wasn’t working.

That’s a tip for parents of young kids. :) But my kids are grown and flown now and I’m joining the masses by contemplating my goals at the very beginning of the year.

Because I write on a strict schedule, I already know my expected output (unless something really dire happens…anything is possible these days!) But I do need to work on the business side of writing, which is never my favorite task. I did work business tasks into my weekly goals last year and it worked out well. I’m hoping to repeat the process this year.

If you’re like me, something in your writing life seems overwhelming. For me, it’s learning something new (TikTok is on my list) and managing advertising. For you, it might be writing a first novel, trying outlining for the first time, or experimenting with a new-to-you genre.

My tips remain the same for all of these different activities: mini plans and mini daily goals.

Mini-planning

Mini-planning is being reasonable with yearly goals. What I do is to do a “brain-dump”: I write down all the things that I want to accomplish in both my personal life and my professional life. This relieves some of my stress about all the things I want to work on over the year.  It’s  actually a pretty scary-looking list involving home repairs, yard-related projects,  organizing family scrapbooks, spring cleaning, scheduling physicals and other doctor appointments for the year, expanding my advertising efforts, outlining and writing 5-6 books, and staying on top of my translation and audio publishing efforts.  Additionally, I’d like to figure out vacation time for my husband and myself…assuming the variant du jour allows that to be a possibility.

What about the above is “mini?” How I incorporate the tasks into my schedule. I take the list, break down the different tasks into smaller bits (home repairs, for example, includes assessing what needs to be done, researching the appropriate contractor to assist us, calling them, scheduling a day, etc.) and fill them into my calendar. The best way to eat an elephant is one step at a time.

Flexibility is key with this approach. Remember that you’re never behind. Each day you start with a blank slate. If something comes up, go ahead and cross off the task on your calendar as soon as you reschedule the task for another day. Because you did address it by rescheduling it.

Mini-goals

Mini-goals follow the same basic process. I use these mainly for writing, but sometimes exercising and housework will also slip into this approach. I find the smallest amount of time that I can make the progress I need and put it on my schedule. For writing, that’s going to be 30 minutes now (I have an empty nest, as I mentioned above), but when I was younger and shuttling kids around, it was as few as 5 minutes.  To me, it’s more important to have a string of successes each day and fuel my self-confidence than it is to get burned out with a big goal.

You can set a word count goal or a time goal. You can make the goal for once a week or every day. It’s extraordinarily adaptable.

The nice thing with mini-goals is that I almost always surpass them. I get caught up in my writing and keep on going.

I’ll be back next Monday with a tip that’s closely-associated with this topic: being intentional.

How do you keep from getting overwhelmed by your goals and upcoming tasks?

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