2019 has definitely been a year of two halves for me and my writing. I had goals at the beginning of this year but had a scattergun approach to achieving these goals and I was chasing short term opportunities rather than actually thinking what my long term ones were.
In May 2019 I was feeling flat and listless with my work - and I realised that I’d taken the wrong path. I was acting like an influencer; focusing on my Instagram and sponsored posts, creating posts for authors and their novels, and not concentrating on my own writing. This was a real wake up call. I realised I wanted to work on my own projects rather than promoting the creativity of another writer.
So I took a step back and had a think. And that’s when I came across a brilliant system for achieving long term writing goals. It was a system I’d flirted with briefly a few years previously but had made it laborious and complicated and I never stuck with it.
But in June I had two goals and I divided them up into a number of projects. I then divided the projects up into tasks which I wrote onto post its and stuck to a board. I moved the post its down from the ‘to be done’ section to ‘in progress’ to ‘done’ as I worked through the tasks. I did the same in the final quarter of 2019 and wow - what a difference it made to my work and writing progress.
It is a simple system but so effective. I achieved goals with my YouTube and made huge, significant progress towards my novel writing and my ‘branding’.
If you’re interested in how I got on or you’re looking for a decent system to motivate and inspire then do check out my video below. Honestly it has changed everything for me and I’m now working on long term projects that feel manageable and not overwhelming because I’ve broken them up into smaller tasks - and I can SEE the progress I’m making thanks to the post its on the board. Writing a book can feel like such a huge. uphill task - especially when you’re also fighting fear and guilt and confidence issues and that devil on your shoulder whispering ‘you can’t do this’. So seeing your progress every week is much needed.
