March Motiviation

[Elizabeth Ann West]

Hi all,

Thought we might all benefit from a little March motivation. I think all of us have had less than stellar first weeks, so here are my efforts to try to turn my March around!

I will have my author's website up and running smoothly by March 15th.

Since this is the end of my first quarter as a full-time writer, I am setting my sights to have $1,000 in articles available for sale by the end of the month.

I will order my business cards and make sure to hand out at least 3 a week to acquaintances.

There, that is my three pronged attack to finish out my quarter strong! I am excited by it, and all of them are goals I can break down and measure my progress in.

Please don't laugh at my second goal if you are one of those writers that has oodles of articles posted. I am still learning, and who knows, maybe one day I will look back on my uncalendar and laugh too !

Always Smiling,
Elizabeth West

p.s. I came up with that plan while dealing with pain from an emergency root canal I had done yesterday. If I can do it, so can you!

[Celeste Stewart]

Those are terrific goals!

[Elizabeth Ann West]

No one else has March goals to share? Come on, we could all use the pick me up and think we are writing super heroes-- able to conquer anything!



Celeste, it's actually thanks to you I have the second goal, in a previous thread you gave me the idea about shift focus from how much I sell, to how much I produce in a given time period, and that is a better way to make sure the sales will always come in.

[Celeste Stewart]

Ah... and may your inventory quickly dwindle down to $0

Hmnn, you're right. We all need goals. Let's see what some of my March goals will be:

1. Take weekends and nights off this month
2. Maintain my daily quota
3. Write 1000 words per week on my book

[Elizabeth Ann West]

What will be really fun is at the end of the month we can roger in how we all did in meeting those goals, kind of a check in to promote everyone's success! That should be neat, if we can get any other takers on goal listing.

[CRDonovan]

You guys both have good goals. Mine are a bit more - nebulous. I've never had goals in terms of selling articles. Of course I want each one I write to sell, but that's not in my control. What I can control is how many I submit. I started off with a goal of uploading 2 to 3 articles per week. But now I've modified that. I'm trying to figure out how to choose writing projects well; and I'm cutting myself slack on how many, focusing instead on how well.

So here's my goal: keep putting one foot in front of the other. Have a current project to work on all the time. As soon as one article is uploaded, choose the next, and work steadily on it (as time permits) until it is ready to upload.

[Elizabeth Ann West]

Congrats on that C-note sale C.R. Donovan. I think that customer is going to be a good regular one.

Make sure you track yourself on how many times you start working after you submit.... goals must be measured!!!

So far I have worked my little booty off towards my threshold goal of getting $300 worth of articles posted this weekend. So far I am up to $159. I have two more days to go this weekend, and I also have extensive work to do on my website too.

[CRDonovan]

Thanks, Elizabeth. Made my day.

I love making lists of things to do actually. So much satisfaction when you cross stuff off!

[Elizabeth Ann West]

An article I posted today on HD DVD for $65 was just gobbled up!

Goodness, if that's not motivation what is?

[Celeste Stewart]

Money talks, doesn't it?

[jak]

Well done on sales, Elizabeth and everyone. Wish I could say mine were gobbled up.

My goals are to to post 3 articles a week and make enough to get paid something each month. Sadly I've missed the first one in the last few weeks, because of family commitments. However, I'm determined to make that up.

Not feeling too good today, though. Come down with a humdinger of a cold. Keep telling myself it shouldn't affect my writing, but of course, it's a great excuse to be slow.

[Lauren]

This is a great thread. I am trying to think about what kind of goals I'd like to give myself, so here goes. I wanted something both motivating and attainable (especially considering I'll have houseguests through March 24!

1. Have at least $500 worth of articles to sell. (I'm calculating this by the full rights price of everything I haven't sold and the usage price of articles already sold for usage.) Right now I'm at $370, so I need to post $130 worth.

2. Have at least 20 articles available for sale. I need to write at least 9 more for this. I think this will be harder than the first goal because of the limited time while houseguests are here.

But those are my goals, and I'm going to meet them!

[Elizabeth Ann West]

I think we can all do it. I managed to get quite a bit done last night on my website. It's hard this weekend though because I am on vicodin (had a root canal done on Thursday), it sometimes puts me to sleep and other times makes me hyper. I should be all better on Monday thankfully!

I have a decorative 3 ring binder, I think it was actually supposed to be a photo album, but it has pink and flowers and the word "Believe" all over it, but I write all of my goals for the month on a pretty piece of stationary (10 in all, all areas of my life) stick them in a plastic sheet protector, and then I cross them off as I go. I just finished one, I scrubbed out my refrigerator completely! (Don't worry it regularly gets wiped down, but this was removing drawers, scrubbing etc. inspired by "How Clean is Your House" on BBC America.)

keep up the good work everyone!

[jak]

If you're watching the same, or similar, "How Clean..." that we've had here in the UK, I'm sure your house doesn't need that kind of cleaning! But it is good to springclean so everything seems fresh and we can feel virtuous afterwards. Quite invigorating, I find.

[Elizabeth Ann West]

It's the same one, I caught it the other day after Bargain Hunter (the most pointless game show ever as no one ever wins very much if at all, but still it's addictive). I don't understand how people let their houses get like that? One woman had to chuck her fridge because of the bacteria and stuff growing ::shudder:: yuck! My fridge NEVER would be like that, but it was due for a good scrub down and I had been putting it off....

If you ever need a motivation to clean, watch the show, you stomach will turn and you will want to rid your house of all dust, dirt, and trash!