I thought it was about time I added a new post to the goal setting for writers section of My Online Freelance Writing Career, so here it is. Goal setting is extremely important if you want to make sure you get the most out of your writing career as possible, and that’s why you should get used to making daily goals as quickly as possible.
I touched on this in my recent blog post entitled ‘do you set yourself goals to achieve as a writer?‘ But I am going to go into it in a little more depth here, as I firmly believe that daily goals are the key to getting more done.
I have fallen into two traps with daily goals in the past, so I will pass them along here in the hope that you will learn from them. They are at opposite ends of the scale:
- Trap #1 – not setting enough daily goals so you don’t end up getting that much done.
- Trap #2 – setting too many and running yourself ragged – also leading to the feeling that you could never achieve everything you ever wanted to with your online writing.
Balancing your goals and your clients can be difficult - but learning how to do it successfully is the key to online writing success
It takes time and experience to get the balance just right. And there is no set number of tasks or jobs you should put down each day for your writing career either. It all depends on how long each job is likely to take you.
For example, glancing at my list of goals for today, one of them is a batch of six articles for a regular client. Now I know from experience that these shouldn’t take very long. They are on subjects that I am familiar with, so research time will be short. I am also familiar with the client and their needs and requirements so that’s another plus point.
But if that batch of six articles was for a new client, they would almost certainly take longer. So I would need to build that additional time into my working day. That might result in less goals overall to get the work done to the highest of standards.
You can see how your own daily writing goals for your online writing jobs will vary. But the important thing is that like myself, you should make sure you have one or more goal for each and every day you work. If you do, you can get more done and feel more confident at what you can achieve for the future as well.
Related posts:
- Do you set yourself goals to achieve as a writer?
- What do you do when you set yourself a writing goal and fail to reach it?
Tags: career, goal setting, learning, organisation
