A new system

In Dan Brown’s Masterclass he says, “trust your process.” The idea being that if you focus on the day-to-day and work consistently, the goal achieves itself. I’m paraphrasing. But this is very much the way I work. I show up and show up and show up and cry and inevitably there will be a finished project at the end of it. Unless it’s housework, of course. There’s no success to be had there.

This isn’t the way I plan though. My planning is very much:

• Publish two books
• Draft a third
• Get fit

And then year after year I don’t achieve those goals. I know how long it will take me to draft a new novel, give or take a week. But so much of revision relies on other people. Authors need feedback. Editors have wait lists. Cover artists… don’t get me started. That’s without taking into account the pandemic and lock-downs, illnesses and school holidays.

As Struthless says, however long you think something is going to take, double that estimation. Give yourself twice as long as you think you need. This is something I know, but something I’m terrible at implementing. Probably because it’s depressing to look at all the things that need doing and then accept that only one or two can realistically be done.

While planning for this year I’ve come across a deficit between how I work and how I set goals. Like, yes, goals need to be broken down into steps and those steps work best when you give them achievable deadlines, but I definitely haven’t been doubling how long I think it will take me. Or really doing the maths for how many words an hour I can revise. It takes a long time and a lot of habit tracking to get an average for that.

Even when I do give myself double the time and I am right with how fast I’ll work, something always comes up. Each milestone I should have reached passes by. I despair. “What am I even doing with my life?” is a horrible feeling.

And yet, when I say “I will work on this project for ten hours this week,” I smash it out of the park. Whereas “I’ll finish this revision pass this week,” ends in a nope. I am guaranteed to find something way more interesting, like housework. Why is that?

If you’re at all like me, you might like to join me in setting time-based goals this year instead of project goals, and keeping them flexible.

For example, I plan to work on my Wicce novels ten hours a week. But on a monthly scale, that’s going to look more like Work thirty hours on Wicce novels because I’m taking into account all the time I want to work but get derailed. Fitness wise, Workout an hour a week is much more achievable than lose two inches off my middle or whatever shit I wrote last year.

To track my focused time, I’ve downloaded Forest, a productivity app that stops me getting distracted by my phone and tracks where my time goes. Now I just have to remember to use it! School holidays are a good time to practice. It can be used with friends, and my favourite part is it stops you using your phone while it’s active. No more sitting down with a good book and then getting lost on Instagram and not reading.

If you’re interested in Forest, I have a friend code and we both get 500 in-game gold if you use it so that’s cool.
Here’s the code: 36MX5GQSG
Here’s the link to copy/paste if the one above gave you trouble: https://forestapp.cc/download/en 

If you haven’t seen it already, I’d like to recommend this Struthless video. Though I’m not setting specific project goals, it was still worth a watch and I enjoyed the exercises.

Miriam Cumming is an author, spouse, parent and witch who has been planning (and living better for it) since 2018. When ne isn’t writing or planning, ne enjoys getting active in nature with the kids, drinking fancy beverages and gardening.