Happy New Year! It’s officially 2019, and the new year always gets me excited and thinking about everything I want to accomplish.

2018 was a big year for me, both as a writer and a business owner. I want to continue that momentum in 2019, which is why this week’s blog is all about goals. (Don’t forget to grab your free productivity toolkit at the end of this post to help you achieve your 2019 writing goals!)

// Why Goals are Important

Setting goals can be scary. What happens if you don’t reach those goals? It’s a question to think about, but it’s also important to understand why goals are important.

Knowing what you’re working towards is the only way to measure your progress and growth. It’s okay if you don’t reach a goal, but it’s not okay to stay stagnant and never try to achieve anything out of fear of failure. What kind of life is that to live?

We should always be striving to be the best version of ourselves, and without having a goal to work towards, we’d probably just aimlessly try different things until something worked.

A goal helps you set up a real action plan, tangible steps you can take and milestones to meet on your way to achieving the bigger goal!

// Examples of Writing Goals

There are probably many things you want to accomplish in life. I have tons of goals for everything from my tennis game to my business.

But what about writing goals? What do those look like?

Writing goals can be whatever fits into your writing life, but here are some ideas to get you started:

• Be consistent about blogging
• Finish the second draft of your novel
• Publish an ebook
• Complete a writing workshop

Whatever goal you set, it should be something that challenges you. That’s the only way we grow. Maybe you want to complete a writing workshop because that will help your writing improve. Maybe, like me, you weren’t consistent with blogging in 2018 and want to blog more 2019 to build your brand and develop a consistent habit.

// Determining Your Action Plan

Once you know what your big goal is, you can work backwards to figure out what you need to do. Let’s look at those examples again.

If you want to blog more consistently, figure out what that means to you. I personally want to blog twice a month in 2019. That means I need to write and publish 24 blog posts. Steps I can take to make that happen include brainstorming, setting aside two hours a week to writing blog posts, and gathering the stock photos I want to use for blog post images.

If you want to finish the second draft of your novel in 2019, figure out where you are now. If you just finished your first draft, decide the deadline to complete draft #2. And if that’s December 31st, then you have 12 months to finish a draft and need to revise three chapters a month to meet your deadline.

As you can see, knowing your main goal is important to work backwards. By working backwards, you can figure out those smaller steps and milestones to meet your deadline.

Make sure you give yourself a reasonable amount of time to achieve these things, too. It would be crazy for anyone to think they could revise an entire novel in just 20 days.

// Want more specific guidelines?

If you want to learn more about productivity and goal setting, don’t forget to download the free productivity toolkit. It has worksheets, calendars, and more to help you figure out your writing goals and action plan.

If you give yourself reasonable time to accomplish things and have a clear path to success, there’s no reason you can’t achieve anything you want!