Did you miss me? I hope all of you experienced love and joy throughout the holiday season. I took off some time to celebrate and to enjoy family, but now the new year is here and it’s time to get back into a routine.

Have you noticed how we get inundated with ads for fitness equipment, gyms and diet plans every January?  It’s so predictable. With the start of a new year, many of us think about new starts.  We refocus our energies on whatever we want to improve about ourselves that we missed the mark on last year. We might want to lose weight, eat healthier, exercise more, or we may want to work on our organizational skills, a career goal, or our relationships. According to U.S. News, approximately 80% of New Year’s resolutions fail by the second week of February. That doesn’t give us the motivation to even try!

Perhaps part of the problem is that our resolutions are too vague .  Instead of resolving to lose weight, a more successful resolution may be to pick a specific amount of weight so you know exactly what your mark is.  Perhaps we fail when we make goals that are too big.  Instead of making it a big goal for the year, like losing 50 pounds in 2019, how about making smaller goals? Try setting a goal like this: I will lose 10 pounds in the next three months. Or I will limit my fast food intake to once per month. Or I will get my fancy, high calorie, drive-thru coffee only once per week instead of every day. Perhaps we fail because we make resolutions without a plan to get there. Saying what you want to improve doesn’t mean you’ve thought through the steps necessary to be successful.

Among other things, I want to focus on career goals this year. Instead of making a resolution, I’m going to take a different approach.  First, I’ve taken time to develop my vision – I’ve looked at the big picture of what I want to accomplish. It may take more than this year to get there, but I have to start by seeing the long-term vision and then take the first step forward. Break the vision into specific smaller goals  that need to happen to get to the finish line.

For example, my vision is to get my book traditionally published. I’ve already done some steps toward getting there, like making sure my book is the best it can be, researching the publishing business, writing a query letter, researching agents, starting this website/blog, and so on. But at this point in my journey, the specific step I need to take is to find an agent that is a good fit for me and this book. So how do I do this? That becomes the mission.  I create a specific plan of attack. Looking at each goal in your vision, develop a strategy of what you are going to do to achieve that goal.

I set some goals by month. In January I have a goal to create a list of at least 50 people I think are potential agents for this book. Another goal is to revise my query letter, again. Starting in February,  I will send out at least 10 query letters per month. In February I will also write/revise a long and a short summary of the book since some agents will request one or the other. In March l will continue sending query letters and responding to requests to see my manuscript. January through March I will also start processing the next book idea in my head and do some basic outlining. April will be the month that I start to seriously write my first draft of a new book. No, that’s too vague. Let’s set the goal to write at least 25 pages of the new book by the end of April. Also at the end of April, I will evaluate how well I’m reaching these small goals and revise if necessary. If you’ve noticed, the mission gives you boxes to check as you progress. Re-evaluating every four months (in April and again in August) and setting goals for the next four months will make this an achievable process rather than a failed resolution. The point is to keep moving forward.  That in itself is success.

Do you have a vision for this year?  If so, have you made a plan to get there?  If not, this is your mission if you choose to accept it.  With a plan in place, the success of your mission is possible.