Hello Lovelies, and welcome back to the blog. We’re ending out another quarter, so it’s time for another goals recap post.
If you remember from last time, I set some goals at the beginning of Q3. As a refresher, they looked like this.
Now, my Trello board looks like this.
Let’s go over it in more detail.
Writing – 13/67 Goals Completed – 19%
Wow, okay. Deep breath. This quarter was rough. And not just rough. The worst quarter I have on record, ever.
And I have all the excuses ready for you. I’m not pushing myself to burnout. My job was the hardest its ever been. Rewrites don’t excite me. And all of those are true.
And yet.
The truest thing of all is that I didn’t prioritize my writing goals this quarter.
Full stop.
And that is so hard to admit and to face. And no amount of me pushing this blog post back a week, trying to drop in scenes into my rewrite that I don’t think will need to be rewritten, or hacking those numbers any other way really changes the fact that I didn’t make the time for my goals and my dreams.
I failed not just this goal, but this whole quarter because of this most important goal. This is absolutely the worst quarter I’ve ever had on record since I started keeping that record almost a decade ago.
As is often the case with something I don’t want to do, I let myself get caught up in a brand new project for a full month that I don’t even intend to write, but now I’m full-tilt outlining it as if I were. I spent many days and hours with the rewrite project open while I played a game and ignored it or got only 200 words in and called it a night.
I failed this quarter. That’s rough to say, because that’s totally on me. Now I have to own up to that, and face it.
Business – 1/3 Goals Completed – 33%
I did manage to post one new item in my Etsy shop this quarter. I was working on another but didn’t get it finished. I made a collection of writing quotes straight from books I’ve read that you can print and post on your walls.
I’m still thinking of moving away from Etsy given the general consensus that I’ve hard about them being bad for payments, but haven’t done any research on any other platforms.
Marketing – 26/26 Goals Completed – 100%
My only saving grace this quarter is keeping up with the blog and the podcast. I completed each of these posts once a week.
Travel, Training, Meetings – 2/2 Goals Completed – 100%
While I did drop my local writing group since I hadn’t been to a meeting with them in a year, I do have one specific friend who I consider an alpha reader and who gives me feedback on all my work. I was able to meet with her twice this quarter for writing-specific hangout time.
Quarter 4 Overall – 42/98 Goals Completed – 43%
So here I am. Coming in at 43% completion rate, my worst quarter ever since I started tracking almost a decade ago.
As you’d expect, I don’t feel great about it. I wanted to be honest about my failure instead of trying to push through or hack the numbers in some way.
Though all the excuses and niceties in the world could be said about it, it’s on me to take responsibility for my non-action. Not only that, but I need to learn from this quarter so that I don’t have a repeat of it in the coming quarter, or really ever again.
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?
