Episode 8: Setting Goals

Good morning, friends. I’m your host, Crys Cain. And this podcast will be coming to you a little late. I’m recording it Wednesday, the 15th of July, 2020. And I was supposed to record yesterday, but our electricity went out for most of the day, and that kind of changed things around for me.

But update on my week. I didn’t write last week. I actually haven’t written this month at all. I have one day on my calendar that says I’ve written and that’s okay. I’ve been working, still. I just haven’t been writing. So, last week ended up being a learning week. I read a lot for fun and in my genres, I finally finished some courses that I had purchased a while ago and just sat there.

One of them was The “W” Plot by Karen Docter. I know that there’s a free YouTube video on The W-Plot, I think by the woman who kind of developed it, but Karen has a really good course on how to use it. And I will put the link in the show notes below. Other news, next year I will be speaking at the Career Author Summit. Yay!

It’s the second one. This year was supposed to be the first one and then COVID happened, so it ended up all being virtual. So now next year they’ve pushed it to September. So hopefully travel will be safe by then and gathering in large groups will be safe by then. But they are offering both an in-person and a virtual ticket. And if things are still wonky by then, they’ll go all virtual again. The dates for those are September 18th and 19th in Franklin, Tennessee, and they will have early bird pricing until the end of this month. So that’s July 31st, 2020, early bird pricing until then, and you can find that at www.careerauthor.com/events.

Also with that crew, the Career Author crew, which is Jay Thorn and Zach Bohannan, I am going to be participating in their Witches of Salem event in July 2021. And they still have tickets available for that. And what that is, is a world building weekend. So as a group, you world build throughout the weekend, you learn about co-writing, which is something that they are very experienced with, and at the end of it everybody kind of has an idea for a short story that they’re going to write for an anthology. And then the anthology is published. All proceeds go to a charity, it’s a really good experience from everything I’ve heard about it.

I’ve wanted to go to one of these for a while and next year is just probably going to be a good year. So I just pulled the trigger and said, I’m gonna go. Tickets for that are also available, though probably not a ton because that’s very limited at www.thecareerauthor.com/events.

But what I want to talk about this week is goals. What are my goals? That has been a question I have been wrestling with for a couple of months now, if not longer.

I know that I’m not fully money-driven. I’m slightly money-driven. I love money and there’s nothing wrong with that.  I definitely do want savings. That is definitely a money drive for me, like one year of expenses in the bank, and an unspecified amount in investments, but beyond my monthly needs, my savings net for safety and a lack of debt, I’m cool with money. I don’t have to reach any specific sales goals to feel accomplished. I hate smart goals though. And that’s one of the things that always gets thrown around when you’re making goals. And what are smart goals? They are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time based.

Why do I hate them? They feel so constrictive. I do like parts of the smart process though. I like specific and measurable. And then I know that when I get it done, I have an achievement unlocked point. I really like thinking of goals as achievements, like Xbox achievements, I unlocked them versus like success failure.

I think the thing I struggle against most with the smart goals is the time based. And don’t get me wrong, I have been amazing at meeting deadlines, but I sacrifice my sleep, my health, my relationships. It’s not ideal. In Atomic Habits, I feel like a priest for the religion of Atomic Habits, I mention this book so much. But James Clear suggests making a goal with a specific date, for example, completing a book in three months and then taking that, figuring out what that date is and backing up to figure out what system will get you there.

So that might be writing 550 words a day every single day, or 1000 words if you take weekends off and then a week of vacation. I really like this process, but for me, I then like to erase the goal date. It’s a suggestion, not a requirement, basically like the Pirate’s code. And if you listened to the last episode, episode seven, where I discussed the personality profiles, you might recognize that this is a very J from the Myers-Briggs.

The judging trait, you focus on the process, not the deadline. And that works really well for specific projects. But what about the terrible job interview question? Where do you see yourself in five to 10 years? UGH. This is hard for me because I can imagine multiple delightful futures, but I have a terrible time judging what is realistic in five to 10 years. 10 years ago, I could barely imagine living full time in Costa Rica, making my living writing stories, and being divorced. That wasn’t a goal. But I dreamed of living in Costa Rica or somewhere else and absolutely writing stories, but I didn’t have any belief in it.

I’m getting better at figuring out where I would want to go and believing anything is possible, but I don’t live at the 50,000 foot view. I do know people like that, they live in big picture land. I live on the balance of big picture and day to day details. That’s the balance of the sensing vs. intuitive in the Myers-Briggs.

So also in last episode I mentioned that my number six Clifton strengths is achiever, which means that I tend to operate really well when I have one big goal I’m pushing hard toward even if I don’t consciously know it’s a goal. And flounder when I don’t. And I’ve been floundering for a bit. There’s no coincidence on this show’s topic.

I need to figure this out for myself. So here we are. And I can’t just pick a random goal. It has to be important and mean something to me. My goal when I started, the goal I didn’t realize was the goal, was to make my living as an author only from book sales. I also had a point where I unlocked that achievement, three, five figure months in a row.

The craziest part to me is that I didn’t consciously set these goals. I didn’t understand this element of my mental makeup, but now I am aware of it, and I want to utilize it to get better, faster. But I have to do some work to dig out these big goals. I have two tools I use to do this and I haven’t used them in awhile.

Actually one i have, and the other it has been four years. So the first is a writing exercise, and the second is a brainstorming exercise. So number one, this is the one I haven’t done in four years is to describe your ideal day and get as specific as you’re comfortable with. Roll out of bed by X-amount of time, here’s your morning routine times, whatever. Or tell yourself a story about how the day goes, whatever it looks like for you. I’m going to share mine in just a minute. And the second one I get from my planner, it’s called a passion planner, and they have an exercise at the beginning of the year and at the midpoint and they call it a passion roadmap.

So we’re going to make a passion roadmap starting with a wishlist. And I will go through that in a minute, but first I am going to read my ideal day. And this was actually really hard for me. This is why I like doing these two specific plans together because they approach the problem in two different ways.

When I did this exercise, the ideal day exercise for five years ago, I had just purchased property here in Costa Rica, I didn’t have a kid yet. I had a very clear vision of what I wanted my days to look like 10 years down the road. I knew what my land looked like. I had that basis. That’s all gone. Selling the property, clearing out debts, all that good stuff, but we have coronavirus.

So it’s really hard for me to think what is even possible 10 years down the road for my days right now. And my kid, he’s going to change so much. He’s going to be 13, 14 by then. So I focused this one on kind of my next year. What does my ideal day look like for my next year? You can do this either way. Whichever one is more feasible for you.

So my ideal day right now is around 5:00 AM I roll out of bed. I meditate, which I’m not currently doing. I check on my garden, which I do do every morning. Water what needs water, get a little bit of exercise in, just something to wake up. And then I write for an hour, hopefully before the kid wakes up and then about 6:30 I get coffee and breakfast with the kid, read or listen to my podcasts, and then we hang out for an hour and a half. Eight o’clock I hand the kiddo over to nanny or school, and then I write for another hour. And actually as I was going through this, because this was like a several day project for me of figuring this out. I would actually want to replace those writes, because I wrote down write originally, with work.

So it doesn’t have to just be writing. It could be doing a class. It could be, I don’t know, working on developing an idea, brainstorming, plotting. It could be anything: work. We’re going to place those with work. Then ideally, this is where the ideal comes in because Coronavirus. 9:30 I go to a coffee shop.

And that can be either I meet a friend or I read, or I think, or I work. That is open. So 11:30. So two hours there, I go home for lunch. 12:30 I give myself an hour and a half for hobbies, nap, or hitting up the beach. Three o’clock kiddos home. We get snack. We play, we read, we watch TV. In that time we also shop for groceries, prep dinner, whatever needs to be done that day. About 5:30 I start dinner. 6:30 we eat. Seven o’clock kid bath, while I read or listen to podcasts. 7:30 we have snuggles and books. And eight o’clock bedtime. And then if I’m still awake after that, I read. This looks so much different than when I did this last and that’s okay. That is actually healthy.

What you want now is not going to be the same as what you’re going to want in a year or two, two years, three years, four years. That’s totally natural. Totally normal. I don’t have a lot of visions for the house, the home I’m building, because I don’t have a route right now in what that could look like.

So I tried to write that whole, in 10 years what does my ideal day look like? And I just don’t have a clue. So this was very helpful for me. And I’m like, okay, this is kind of what I need to gear myself towards for this year. Now, the passion planner was a lot more useful in kind of figuring out my longterm goals.

So how this works, and I’m going to link to an example they have on their website. So for this one you’re going to need a blank piece of paper. I recommend one that’s not lined, but you can absolutely use lines. It’s just a little more free forming and brainstorming if you don’t use lined paper or turn it sideways so the lines or up and down instead of horizontal.

What you’re going to do with this piece of paper is draw a line down the middle vertically and then draw a line across horizontally, so that you’ve got four, mostly equal quadrants. And let me pull up my planner here. So I’m just going to read their instructions.

Okay. So what you’re going to do in this quadrant is you are going to label the top left corner Lifetime. You’re going to label the top right corner Three Years, and you’re going to put that date. So three years from now, what is the date? In the bottom left corner you’re going to write One Year and put that date, and in the bottom right corner, you’re going to put Three Months and what that date is.

Now you’re going to make your wishlist. Set a timer for five minutes. This is really important because otherwise you’re going to think too much about this and debate on whether something should be put down or not. Set a timer for five minutes. Write everything. You’re going to imagine that whatever you write on this piece of paper will come true within the designated timeframe.

Think of it as a wishlist describing your ideal life. Ask yourself: if I could be anything, do anything or have anything, what would it be? Write every single thing that comes to mind and be as specific as possible. Lastly, do not feel the need to be realistic or justify your dreams. Just write. So once that is done, you prioritize. Set the timer for one minute.

Go back to each of the four sections and circle one goal that would have the most positive impact on your life. So these are the four goals that you are going to prioritize. Now you’re going to move from your wishlist to your passion plan. You’ll need another clean sheet of paper. You’re going to take one of those goals. Your game changer is the goal that would have the most positive impact on your life right now.

So you’re going to write that in the middle of the paper. Draw a circle around it, whatever you need to do to make it your brainstorming thing. Now you’re going to set your timer again for five minutes and write down all the necessary steps needed to achieve your goal.

The more detailed, the better. Connect each step to the middle circle or box, whatever you need, with a line. The next step they suggest is to assign due dates to each of the tasks. I won’t do this. Most of my goals don’t need this necessarily to get me going. That’s my personality. It may be helpful for you to set the due dates. And then similar to this, create a timeline, number all the tasks in the order in which they must be completed, and then make a date.

And that’s where you use their planner to go through and, you know, find those dates when things are due and put them on your calendar. So these are steps that I don’t do. And then you repeat this step for as many goals as you’d like. I’m going to read through some of mine. So in my lifetime goals, I want five developed properties, real estate properties, houses, rentals, at least five developed properties.

I really want more than that, but I probably should have written like 30 or something. The whole, don’t worry about being realistic, but whatever. I would like a million dollars in stocks and bonds. I would like to own a permaculture farm/community. I’d like to write a world with 30 books in it.

I want to go back to University for a history degree. I want to live three or more months in 10 different countries. And I would love to provide for my parents’ retirement. Under three years I have: I want to run a yearly writing retreat. I want to renovate a schooly, so a school bus that you turn into a home.

I want to build a tiny house on my property in upstate New York. I want this podcast to have 130 episodes. I want to write and illustrate a children’s book with my son. I want one year of my base income in savings. And I want a writing cabin. In one year: I have a weight loss goal, just to healthy weight.

I want, this is my fun stuff, I want eyeliner tattoo. Save me time and keep that joy of face painting. I would like to finish book one in the next year with my friend, Tammy. And I would like five books under my name published that are aren’t romance. And in the next three months: I would like one book published as Crys Cain. I want plants in my bedroom and I would like to develop three mini-classes for a project that I’m a part of. So what I circled as the thing that will give me the most benefit in the immediate is getting one book published as Crys Cain. And so I created my little brainstorm about that.

I have two options, one fiction, one nonfiction. So I did plans for both of them. They’re both things I think I can work on simultaneously. I still need to prioritize which one I get done first and I know the nonfiction is most likely to get done first if I just sit down and do it, and that’s been a problem I’ve been having. Part of that, I think is a bit of an emotional burnout.

I just haven’t been able to reach a deep thinking level very easily. That is going away. I’m coming out of that. So. I’m going to give myself kind of another week to mull over which of these I really need to like sit down and run at while working on both of them right now. But that is how I set my goals.

So my big goal, then the big goal I need to work towards. I still don’t know that. Like what is going to be my achiever goal? What’s going to be my big goal. I do think that that is probably more in the realm of nonfiction because repeating a goal I’ve already reached with the romance, with the sci-fi and fantasy, doesn’t feel as meaningful to me.

I also don’t want to pressure myself to hurry up and get X number of books done. I want these books to be more joyful. Not that the romance isn’t joyful, but that I just get to play more instead of produce. So I don’t think that my achiever goal, like the thing that I’m going to push hard to get done, is going to be fiction oriented.

I think that it’ll be in the nonfiction realm. And that’s the podcast, that’s some teaching projects. That’s the nonfiction book. I think that actually is more my goal. And I’m thinking this through right now, live with you. But that’s still something I’m going to sit with for a little bit, figure out what my big goal is to get done.

And probably not just the book or not just one project. I don’t think that’s my big goal. I think I need to have a larger goal because with the goal of making it as a full time author on only my books, that was the goal. The achievement marker was something different. It was that money achievement marker.

So I think that there is a goal I haven’t put into words yet, as far as nonfiction goes, whether it’s just to be recognized as an expert in this field and then the marker for that goal is something different. Whether it’s like I get to keynote at an event or it might be that I make X amount from nonfiction versus fiction.

I’m not sure. So that’s something that I need to work on a bit more. If you decide to go through these exercises, I’d love to hear what your results were, what you’re willing to share. So feel free to head over to www.writeawaypodcast.com and tell me what your goals are.