Set priorities! Achieve goals, ignite career, sell books, enjoy life!
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| Sunny Nash, Author-Journalist |
New Year resolutions are for other people. I set priorities that change as life changes to reach my goals.
When I first started my career, I made resolutions for everything from how many pages I would produce to how many query letters I would send out. Then I discovered resolutions were like promises--often made hurriedly to have something to recite at a New Year's Eve party or to my colleagues after the holiday--made to be broken. A popular new year resolution I hear people make, year after year, is to lose weight. Why? So you can fit into some long-out-of-style, ugly-by-current-standards outfit in the back of the closet?
Read what people have said about new year resolutions.
Each day of the new year, I have a sub-set of my larger life or career goals, around which I set priorities for my day's activities. I continue this practice even as the year grows old. As a writer, I edit something or write a few new pages to be sure to further a project along each day. Usually, it is not my intention that day or any given day to finish anything, but I hope to push some work each day closer to the finish.
Set priorities to make sense of your life.
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| Setting Priorities Resemble Scales Some Priorities Weigh More Than Others |
Going through life without priorities must be like tumbling around in a vacuum cleaner with dust swirling all around your head. How does one organize dust? And who would want to?
Without setting priorities, nothing much is possible, one reason for setting them and changing them as as life changes. I can't tell someone else how to live but I can tell you how I try to manage my goals and priorities. My goals and priorities include those elements that I know, enjoy and do not feel are a burden. However, I try to include the unfamiliar as a stimulant to increase my interest in the activity. The unfamiliar area makes me stretch my imagination and knowledge. Don't be afraid of research.
One priority I carry from year to year is learning.
Without setting priorities, nothing much is possible, one reason for setting them and changing them as as life changes. I can't tell someone else how to live but I can tell you how I try to manage my goals and priorities. My goals and priorities include those elements that I know, enjoy and do not feel are a burden. However, I try to include the unfamiliar as a stimulant to increase my interest in the activity. The unfamiliar area makes me stretch my imagination and knowledge. Don't be afraid of research.
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| Setting Priorities and Goals Helps Organize Thoughts and Plans |
I start with a detailed list of things I want to accomplish. From my detailed list, I extract a simpler working list, not written in concrete because I know I must remain flexible. Life requires flexibility. Setting priorities is an ongoing task that I edit and change as necessary.
One reason I write lists by hand on a piece of paper with a pen or pencil is that the writing exercise places me in direct contact with my goals and priorities, making the process a very personal communication with my soul. The contact I feel between me and my list produces a certain harmony of thoughts.
