How I stay productive in the long-term/goal keeping for beginners
Hello! I’m sure many of us here on the writeblr and studyblr communities are familiar with the idea of monthly challenges - be it NaNoWriMo, 30 days of productivity, #1month1language, you name it, and many of us use them to stay focused on our work. I’d like to introduce a method for applying this to larger aspects of life. I originally took this idea from writer Jenna Moreci @countblogula, who posted Youtube videos of her “Quarterly Writing Goals” and decided to adapt it for my own needs. For me, a quarter is too long - I’d get distracted, and the gratification of “winning” is few and far between just by virtue of how long the period is. A weekly to-do list is too short because it fills up so quickly and then I feel bad for not getting “enough” done, and I loved NaNo so monthly goals it was, and they’ve worked fantastically.
Read how it works below the cut..
1) Go to the notes app on your phone and open up a new checklist. Preferably something that lets you mark off entries. Google Tasks and Colornote are the two that I use, but any app would really work.
2) Start listing goals, but they should probably follow this set of rules:
No putting on obligations. You have to do your homework, chores, and other general tasks and that doesn’t count as a goal
No habit building. Get a habit tracker for that. You will inevitably lose your streak and not be able to mark off this goal and that will get discouraging after a while.
Try to include things to keep you well rounded - read 2 books, get up to 20 push-ups, finish editing chapter 4, and apply for 3 scholarships would all be good examples
Make sure they can actually be completed in a month
3) Assemble a list of 20-30 goals. I’m telling you right now that you will not accomplish all of them. This is ok. Write them down anyway. Move onto step 4.
4) Pin the list to your notifications bar. Set a reminder for every day at 8:00am. Write it down on a whiteboard and put it on a mirror in your bathroom. Bujo it. Make sure you won’t be able to ignore it.
5) Honestly, this is optional but I highly recommend doing it anyway - Tell someone. Get an accountability friend. Make a deal with your room-mate/parent to do extra chores if you don’t win. Publish it on the internet. As Jenna says, “public humiliation is a great motivator.”
5) Go to work. You have a month, and therefore a flexible schedule. You don’t have to accomplish it all at once, or one/day. Do them when you have time to work on them and mark them off as you go. They’re small and attainable and finishing one may give you the motivation needed to keep going.
6) At the end of the month, count up how many goals you finished. If you’ve completed half of them or half plus a margin of 1-4, CONGRATULATIONS! YOU WON! Go treat yourself and make a new list. If not, or you completed all/almost all of them, continue to Step 7.
7) Reassess. Honestly, everyone should be doing this, but try to figure out where you went wrong. Were the goals too easy? Unattainable? So vague that you kept mentally moving the benchmark until you didn’t mark it off at all? Too specific? Did you make too many? Too few? Troubleshoot and try again for next month.
I hope this helps you with your productivity this month! I have been doing this since early 2018, I think, and it’s honestly so gratifying and useful to see how much you’ve got done - I know I’ve been a lot more productive for it. Very soon, I am going to start publishing my monthly goals lists for another sense of accountability and to share the encouragement with all of you, so keep a lookout for that. Good luck with this challenge!
The Savior’s Champion the new fantasy novel by author Jenna Moreci who just released the book trailer and revealed the cover which I love very much and I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy of this book.
The Savior’s Champion or TSC for short is a romantic action-adventure fantasy novel. The story follows our main character Tobias who enters the Sovereign’s Tournament which is a gladiatorial fight to the death whose winner gets to marry the ruler known as The Savior.
However, Tobias has no desire to marry The Savior he is entering in order to provide for his family for whom he has already made many sacrifices.
Tobias is thrown into the Sovereign’s Tournament with nineteen other men, and each of them is fighting—and killing—for the chance to rule at The Savior’s side. Instantly, his world is plagued with violence, treachery, and manipulation, revealing the hidden ugliness of his proud realm. And when his circumstances seem especially dire, he stumbles into an unexpected romance, one that opens him up to unimaginable dangers and darkness.
TSC will be available for our reading pleasure on April 24, 2018, You can find Jenna Here:
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!! This cover is freakin’ awesome! The trailer was freakin’ AWESOME!! I can’t freakin’ wait for April!!!
I promised myself that I will not rest until I make all the female leads from my favourite book series (the lunar chronicles duh!) but god! this takes a lot of time but end result makes you happy its worth it! 😁 so here is our badass cyborg mechanic Cinder.
