Hello Lovelies, and welcome back to the blog!
It’s a new quarter, which means it’s time to set some new goals, so let’s jump straight in.
Here we are back at the Kanban-style Trello Board. If you’ve been here a while, you’ll already be familiar with this, but for those that aren’t, I use Trello as a digital sort of Kanban board. I still have categories for my tasks, but I don’t use the “to do, doing, done” modifiers. They all just stay on their lists and I modify the cards within them with checklist tasks that are small and actionable. In other words, either I complete them or I don’t.
I’ve already talked about my yearly goals in another post, so let’s jump right in and you’ll see how my quarterly goals match up with the goals I set at the beginning of the year.
Writing – 47 Goals
Continuing with the Multiverse and Me rewrite, the same goals from last quarter rollover. I am working through the first act and rewriting chapter by chapter, adding some new scenes into my zero draft as I go.
Business – 3 Goals
I have an Etsy Shop called Hello Lovelies where I create high quality, (mostly) writing-related downloads and printables for you to use in your writing practice. I try to add one new thing per month to my shop to increase the amount of shop items available, but also because I’m constantly trying to make useful things for myself and my own writing practice, and I want to share them with all of you.
Marketing – 26 Goals
Keeping in theme, I have a podcast called the Hello Lovelies Podcast that you can find on all major platforms. I personally listen to all my podcasts these days on an app called Snipd because it has all the traditional podcast app features, plus it allows you to take custom “snips” of the podcast episodes. I don’t get any kickbacks from them, I just love their app. That’s an entire other post though!
I have been posting my podcast episodes weekly for the second year in a row, in tandem with the weekly blog posts. Honestly, I’m personally much more likely to listen to a podcast than to read a blog or even watch a YouTube video, and I wanted to provide that option to others as well.
Travel, Training, Meetings – 0 Goals
I promised myself that if I didn’t get to at least one of my local writing group meetings last quarter I’d stop trying, because that would have made a year that I hadn’t been to a meeting with them and a goal is no goal if you never intend to see it through.
I do have a small personal group, but we haven’t made anything official. There may still be a goal in this category if we do, however.
Quarter 4 Overall – 76 Goals
I’m actually moving into this quarter kind of burned out from things that are going on in my personal life. My work is insanely busy this year like it has never been before, and this extended period of work stress has me coming home and craving all the sleep. Which, by the way, I have absolutely been giving myself. Grace for the low productivity is a little harder to come by, but I’m trying to be less hard on myself every day.
This total is a little low, but generally, I add more goals in as the quarter moves on, so I’m okay with starting a little on the low side. Even coming in to this quarter a little burned out, I just really want to get this rewrite in the books and get it into my alpha reader’s hands. One of my friends is really wanting to do Camp NaNoWriMo in July so I’m hoping that’s going to be a boost for me this quarter and I have something to show at the end of the month.
Discussion Questions
- How often do you set goals and how often do you check in with them?
- How was your quarter?
- How many goals did you set and how many of them were you able to accomplish?
