I'm still unpublished, but some of his articles are really poignant and informative. I may not need to know how to market my book yet - gotta write it first - but hearing about how my organizational skills could improve...? Yeah, that sounds a little important.
Setting goals is really vital to accomplishing anything. We do this even if we don't realize it. As babies, we set a goal to try to use tools. It's a simple goal, touch everything with the hopes that maybe something ends up being used as a tool. Like a blanket. First, we learn to touch it (what does it feel like), then we learn to pull it (how hard do I have to pull), until we finally learn how to pull it up over ourselves and keep ourselves warm.
Well, Randy might be giving advice to aspiring authors, but this article I've attached for your reading pleasure is about setting goals and staying accountable to those goals. It's good advice for all of us!
As a YFU volunteer, I strive to stay accountable to my students. They're about to head home after their year in the USA and I never once want to think "Man, I wish I had contacted them more... I wish I could have given them more...". I usually do, but that's just me.
Enjoy!~
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Organizing: Accountability and You
One of the smartest pieces of advice I ever got came from my friend Tosca Lee. Tosca is a novelist who works for the Gallup organization helping business people learn to work more effectively.
We were at a conference last fall chatting about how to get more stuff done, and Tosca told me, "You need a personal Board of Directors -- someone to help you set goals and deadlines and enforce them."
I thought that was a pretty good piece of advice, so naturally I did nothing about it. Until recently, anyway.
I now have a Board of Directors, and we recently made some goals for me. One of those goals is to wrap up a project I've been working on for almost a year. It's a very worthwhile project, probably the best thing I could do for myself right now.
But I've been putting off working on it because other things were crowding it out. Important stuff. Writing. Work. Family. The usual suspects.
So my Board had to get harsh with me. The conversation went very roughly like this:
Board: Project X is important to you, right?
Me: Right.
Board: How long would it take to get it done if you worked hard at it, without killing yourself?
Me: Basically, there are three major milestones. I could get the first one done 2 weeks from today if I really had to. I could get the second one done 4 weeks later without too much problem. I could finish the project about 10 days after that.
Board: Great. Those are your next three milestones then. What penalty are you willing to pay if you miss them?
Me: Penalty? Um, fifty bucks?
Board: Will a penalty of fifty dollars be so harsh that you can guarantee you won't have to pay us?
Me: Not really. If I got side-tracked, I'd probably pay the fine and not worry about it.
Board: That's not a good penalty. How high would your fine have to be that you can be very sure you won't have to pay it?
Me (laughing nervously): Well, if it was five hundred dollars for each milestone, I'd do whatever it took to get it done. Because I can't afford to pay fifteen hundred bucks just to miss a deadline.
Board: Are you SURE you could get it done in that time?
Me: Yeah, I could do it. I'd have to buckle down, but I could get it done.
Board: Are you willing to commit to a fine of five hundred dollars for each milestone? Is the reward of finishing this project worth running that risk?
Me: Absolutely.
Board: We want to hear the commitment.
Me (taking deep breath): If I don't reach any of those milestones, I'll pay you five hundred dollars for each miss. Gack! What did I just say?
Board: Do you want to back out? Last chance!
Me: No, I'm in. I'm committed.
When I got off the phone with my Board, I was already rearranging my schedule in my mind. I'm a good tactical thinker, and so I made a list of steps to complete the first milestone.
The next working day, I sat down and put in two and a half solid hours of work on that milestone. And I hit it! Yes, really, that's all it took was a few hours on one day of work to hit the first milestone. That's the power of fear.
I'm working on the next milestone now. This one's a bit harder, but I have more time to work on it. I'm confident I'm going to hit it too. Ditto the third one.
That's what accountability is. Let's look at the crucial elements that are making this work for me and that can make it work for you:
* An accountability partner. You need someone to answer to. You have to give that person or group authority. They have to be willing to exercise it. If they aren't willing to enforce your commitments, then they are worthless to you. Find somebody with a spine.
* A worthwhile goal. If the goal isn't worthwhile, then there's no real reason for you to waste time on it. So pick a goal that you really want to reach.
* Objective milestones. Make sure you choose milestones that there ain't no arguing about. "Being loved by the masses" is a fine goal, but how would you verfiy it? "Blogging every day this week" is something that anyone can verify just by checking your blog.
* Achievable milestones. You need milestones that are wholly in your control and that you can reasonably accomplish. "Getting an agent" is outside your control because those pesky agents might not cooperate. "Sending out queries to ten agents by the end of the month" is completely in your control and completely doable.
* A reasonable schedule. You need a schedule that will stretch you without killing you. Neither too easy nor too hard. It makes sense to set these with fairly short time horizons, like a few days or a few weeks. It's easier to estimate what you can do in an hour than in a year.
* A penalty stiff enough to get your attention. If you can just barely afford to pay the fine for failure, then that's ideal.
What about you? Do you have a worthwhile goal that you've been working on sorta, kinda, maybe, whenever
you have time? Maybe you want to finish your novel. Maybe you want to write your proposal. Maybe you want to just finish the stinkin' first chapter. Whatever.
If you've been putting off reaching this goal and you know you could hit it if only you weren't so darned busy, then here are some steps to work through to get it done:
* Pick a worthwhile goal and write it down. Explain in writing what rewards you'll get for reaching this goal. The rewards may be money, prestige, personal satisfaction, or whatever makes your clock tick.
* Break your goal down into one or more milestones that are each objective and achievable. Assign dates that are reasonable if you work hard.
* Find an accountability partner and talk over your goal and milestones together. Talk about why the goal is worthwhile. Explain why each milestone is critical to reaching the goal. Describe roughly what level of effort you need to reach each milestone. Convince your accountability partner that you can reach each milestone by its deadline.
* Commit to a penalty you'll pay for missing each milestone. Have your accountability partner commit to enforcing the agreement.
* Go to it. You are now committed. Other people will try to encroach on your time. Tough. Explain to them
that you have a commitment to hit a worthwhile deadline, but that it carries a heavy penalty for failure. They'll understand. They won't like it, but they'll understand. They'll also be watching to see if you fly -- or crash and burn. They may even be envious.
That's really all there is to accountability. I'd like to thank Tosca Lee and John Olson for helping me get more accountable. Tosca's latest book is titled HAVAH. John's latest is titled SHADE. Five-letter titles are apparently cool.
Tosca is at http://www.ToscaLee.com
John is at http://www.Litany.com
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Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, "the Snowflake Guy," publishes the Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, with more than 16,000 readers, every month. If you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction, AND make your writing more valuable to editors, AND have FUN doing it, visit http://www.
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