Tag Archives: goal setting

Too Many Goals, a Cautionary Tale

Posted on by
3

As an ambitious person, I tend to go overboard when it comes to setting goals. A good goal should force you to stretch yourself to reach, but still be doable. They require real effort. This is a good thing. Reaching for a goal means that even when I don’t complete it in its entirety, I still work harder and get more done than if I hadn’t set the goal at all.

The problem I keep running into is setting too many goals at one time. When this happens, I spend each day scrambling to try to reach the most important ones and lamenting the ones I didn’t have time to work on. It’s a nasty cycle. Without fail, I’ll say stupid things to myself like “I can catch up on that tomorrow or over the weekend” fully knowing that the time fairy isn’t going to grant me more hours, even if I promise to slip her into one of my stories. Sometimes it’s not time that causes the problem, but energy. It doesn’t matter how much free time you have if you’re too tired to think or work.

I started July like I start every month, by looking over what I really wanted to make progress on and then setting goals that would help me do so. Turns out there were plenty of things I wanted to be more consistent doing that included house and yard work, personal health goals, and of course, authoring pursuits.

When I counted the things on my list today, I found sixteen different tasks that I needed to accomplish if I wanted to reach all those goals today. Some only take a few minutes, but most take anywhere from twenty minutes to two hours each. It doesn’t take a genius to do the math there. Even on a great day, there’s no way I’d have the time. Especially since I’ve also got the kiddos at home and need to give them attention as well, not to mention keep everyone fed.

Yep, just thinking about it is stressing me out a little.

Will I learn my lesson when I set goals for August? I surely hope so. The good thing is that every time I work through one of these challenges, I do learn a few things. This time I learned that tracking that many goals becomes stressful and tedious. It’s best to limit goals to the things that are truly important and then do the best you can with the rest.

My question to you is, are you a goal setter? If so, what does your goal setting practice look like?

Thank you dear reader for stopping by! If you’d like to be notified of future posts here at JodiLMilner.com, be sure to ‘subscribe’ using the handy links. Or, even better, sign up to be part of my mailing list and get a signup bonus of one of my short stories for free.

You can also find updates and post notifications on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram – chose the one you like the most!

One Hundred Hours to Success

Posted on by
3

If you are like the millions like me right now, you’re stuck at home far more than you’ve ever been before. Many of us are finding we have leagues more time on our hands than we know what to do with. It’s an uncomfortable position to be in. Those who find you have less time on your hands than before probably have children, like me.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of perks to having kids. Having free time isn’t one of them.

Photo by Kevin Ku on Unsplash

Many of you might be trying your hand at new skills. If you haven’t gotten a good handle on cooking essentially all your meals and are still trying to live on ramen, try adding a spoonful of peanut butter to it for some instant Thai food! If you’re feeling fancy, add a boiled egg. If you don’t know how to boil an egg allow me to introduce you to my my good friend Google and her twin sister YouTube. If you came to this blog for cooking advice, do I dare ask what you searched to get here?

There is this an grow belief that anyone can do anything if they put their mind to it. I like this belief. It helps people feel brave enough to try things at least once. However, there is a far cry between learning something, and mastering it. I’ve heard quoted that it takes 10,000 hours of work to achieve mastery of any given discipline.

That sounds about right when it comes to a handful of fields, like coed underwater basket weaving in shark infested waters, or perhaps getting orchids to rebloom. But I digress. If you do the math – and why would you, that’s what I’m here for – that’s over twenty-seven years of spending on hour a day learning a skill.

Now that you are all sufficiently daunted by that number, allow me to propose a different formula.

100 hours of work to reach a goal.

Photo by Rachael Crowe on Unsplash

That’s three months working an hour each day, twenty weeks if you work only weekdays, and a year if you work only weekends. Either way, you have to choose how to spend your time and what works for your schedule

The whole idea here is that if you aren’t willing to spend at least 100 hours toward a goal, then you probably won’t be willing to spend five hours, or even one.

Want to write a book? Plan on spending around 100 hours to create the first draft. If you get it done faster, great. For reference, it takes me about 80 hours to write the first draft of a 100,000 word book. Are all those words good, nope. I’m still in the part of my career where I still find myself rewriting way more than I expect.

Want to lose weight? I’ll bet you if you you commit to spending 100 hours spread between planning meals, exercising, and researching the best way for you to work with your body’s needs, that you’ll probably do great.

Want to run a marathon? Spending 100 hours building up strength and endurance will see you all the way to the end.

The list goes on and on and it can be applied to literally anything.

What will you spend 100 hours on?

You can also find updates and post notifications on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram – chose the one you like the most!

Power Word: Strive

Posted on by
1

Everyone knows there are goals worth working for. These goals are as unique as the person who sets them. They are what you spend your free time on, what you think about when you are drifting off to sleep, and what excites you when you hit milestones.

Striving to achieve these goals isn’t only important to overall well-being, it also brings intense satisfaction.

For me, I have plenty of goals I’m working toward as well as other areas where I want to excel. The most obvious is with my writing career. I want to achieve success as an author. Other things are equally important to me as well. At home, I want to be an awesome mom, a decent chef, have a beautiful yard, and keep an organized home. In my personal life, I’d love to learn character sketching and graphic design and take up karate once more.

Photo by Bruno Nascimento on Unsplash

It all has to start somewhere. For me, the word strive means to work with a goal in mind. It means spending time learning, practicing, and applying new skills. It means stepping closer toward mastery. It means sacrificing free time and sleep.

Many people have this belief that someday they’ll find the time to do the things they’ve always dreamed about. It could be after their kids have left for college, after they retire, after they get their next bonus, or after they pay off a debt.

What usually happens is that they keep putting off their dreams until they no longer have time or energy to be able to live them – and that’s tragic.

Some dreams require significant investment, like traveling abroad. Some require huge amounts of time, like writing a book. Some require additional schooling, like getting certified to be a life coach. Every single one starts with a baby step in the right direction.

While there are many things I would love to dive into right now, I know what my time limitations are. I also know the power of small consistent effort over time.

For now, I’m striving to be a successful author by spending time everyday writing, editing, and producing my next books. I spend time every week communicating with other authors and learning and growing. I make time to attend conferences. Every page finished, every new skill honed, every effort brings me that much closer to my goal.

What are you striving for?

What dreams are you willing to take the first step in accomplishing?

Let’s discuss it all in the comments below!

If you want to read my other power word posts, head over to Power Words of 2019.

You can also find updates and post notifications on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram – chose the one you like the most!

Positive Messages in Stonebearer’s Betrayal

Posted on by
Reply

While there are a lot of books out there with terrific messages, there are also a rampant amount of books out there that idolize unhealthy relationships and glorify questionable life choices.

While Stonebearer’s Betrayal is far from perfect, it does contain several positive messages that I think are important for everyone.

Image by azboomer from Pixabay

#1 – The power is in you

Perhaps the most important message in Katira’s story is that everyone, regardless of if they have magic or not, has the power to change a situation. Choosing to be brave and make hard decisions can be scary, but in the long run it’s ultimately more rewarding.

#2 – There is a special magic that can only happen between people who have been together for years and years.

Katira’s parents, Jarand and Mirelle, have been together for almost two hundred years.
They share a magic bond that helps them feel and understand what the other is feeling. Throughout the story we get to see the beautiful give and take of their relationship and how close they are to each other. While magic like this doesn’t exist in the real world, this kind of closeness and empathy can be cultivated when a couple is willing to continually work on improving their understanding of each others needs.

#3 – If a relationship isn’t working out, it’s okay to part in friendship.

Sometimes things don’t work between people. It happens. Pop culture constantly shows us that this break up calls for drama and nastiness, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Often, all that’s needed is a heartfelt conversation where each person feels safe to talk about how they feel. It takes a lot of courage to do this because as we all know, feelings hurt. The more people can see this happen in the media they consume, the more likely they will be willing to try.

#4 – It’s okay for things to go badly, it’s not okay to endlessly wallow in it.

Most fiction does an admirable job showing that those who wallow in self-pity only manage to prolong their own suffering and cause themselves additional problems. However, sometimes stories reinforce the message that the sad person gets all the attention while the person who chooses to move on is portrayed as heartless or uncaring. There can be a balance. It’s okay to feel bad when things go wrong, in fact it’s healthy to allow a moment to mourn or be angry. It’s not healthy to remain there longer than necessary.

#5 – You don’t have to be a princess or specially chosen to do something amazing.

There is this very damaging idea that ordinary people can’t do important things, that they need special permission or the perfect opportunity or the right people to guide them. This is far from true. Anyone can take steps to work toward a challenging goal. It takes courage to step out of the box, to break the mold, and to do the incredible – and that’s why it’s powerful to see when others succeed. You can succeed too!

Fortune favors the bold, Aristotle

***

You can also find updates and post notifications on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram – chose the one you like the most!