Read this on galpod.com.
Right. I had set myself five goals for June. I failed on four of them. If you followed the blog this month, this is not a surprise. Today, I'll talk a little bit about what worked and what didn't. I find there aren't many blog posts out there that talk about people failing their goals, so hopefully, this post can fill up the gap 😊.
I'll start by reviewing the goals, and how I did on each, then I'll talk a little bit about why and what July is going to look like.
Goal 1: Write 1500 words every work day
At the beginning of the month, I kept this count up. By the end of the month, my word count was zero for a good ten days. My goal for the month was 31,500 words, and I wrote 19,037 words, which is about 60% of what I wanted to achieve. Interestingly, in my book, I wrote an average of 401 words per working day, which is about 80% of the goal I had set up for the month.
Goal 2: Blog every day
As you may have noticed, that didn't work out for me either. I blogged a total of 16 days, which is just over 50%. I wrote a total of 7,387 words on the blog. I have one new follower on the blog (THANK YOU!) and ten new followers on Medium (THANK YOU!). I haven't imported my posts to Medium regularly because Medium has been annoying. I also made no effort to gain new followers, so, all in all, it was to be expected.
Goal 3: Read every day and keep a reading log
This one I actually managed to hit. I read every single day, and only one day was below the 20 daily pages I usually try to read. I read a total of 1,349 pages in June, although I have to say some of them were not very good pages.
Goal 4: Finish my academic paper
Bust. I made some progress, but I didn't even get to writing or editing the actual document. I'm still working on the data to see what's the best way to tell this story, because academic papers need to tell a story, too. No making up any part, though, so it's a little more difficult than fiction writing I find.
Goal 5: Begin editing Labour Pains
Nope. My plan was actually to finish reading an editing book I'm currently reading, make a list, and then go through the manuscript using that list. I haven't even finished the book.
Why I haven't met my goals
My partner thinks the goals I set myself were too aggressive. It's entirely possible. I still think I'm able to write 1500 words on a good day. The problem is, my goal doesn't take into account bad days. I also didn't plan on taking time off when my family came to visit. That is, I planned on taking some time off, but I intended to also somehow write the same amount of words in an hour. To be completely honest, I knew when I set the goals that they were aggressive. That they weren't realistic goals. But I figured I'd be better off pushing myself than giving up before I started. I'm not sure that paid off because I felt like I'm disappointing everyone around me (and I was disappointing myself) when I didn't meet the goals. But, what I think I need to do is work on the feeling of disappointing myself, as opposed to lowering the goals I set myself. I firmly believe that I should set high standards for myself. I set high standards for others, as well, but that's a whole other blog post.
July Goals
I've gone ahead and signed up to Camp NaNoWriMo this month, which should be fun. I've set myself the goal of 1000 words per workday on my book, which should get me comfortably to the goal of 20k words total. I also want to blog every day, although maybe not on weekends. I find that weekends are better used if I go offline. I want to finish that academic paper and send it on its way, and I want to begin editing Labour Pains. So, really my goals are not that different from June. My kids' school is breaking up for summer holidays on July 20, so there might be again a drop towards the end of the month. So goals are:
Write 1500 words every workday (Monday-Friday), 1000 of which in my WIP (work in progress)
Blog every workday.
Read every day and keep a reading log.
Finish the academic paper I’m working on.
Begin editing my first novel (Working title: Labour Pains).
Let's see how this one goes 😉.
Here's to a happy, sunny, productive July! :)