FireworksHi and Happy New Year! A lot of us make New Years Resolutions, but they usually go by the wayside pretty quickly. One of the reasons is that they aren’t SMART. So this year, Make Your Resolutions SMART Goals and Win! The idea of SMART Goals was originally attributed to management goal setting but has since been adapted to authors. Here’s what you need to know to create goals that you actually achieve —

S — Specific

If your goals are vague ideas of things that might be nice to have, you’ll never achieve them because you won’t recognize them when you get there.

M — Measurable

How will you know when you’ve achieved the goal? What EXACTLY will tell you that you got there?

A — Achievable

It might be nice to set a goal to be a NYT bestselling author but you can’t achieve that. Other people do. What achievable steps will you take to be an NYT bestseller? Those are your goals.

R — Relevant

What’s the point of setting goals that don’t relate to what you ultimately want to achieve? You want to be a successful writer? Signing up for that painting class isn’t relevant — unless you plan to write about it.

T– Time related

If you don’t know by when your goal must be achieved, you can’t muster the forces to get you there. SMART goals always have a specific time limit.

So that’s it. Decide what you want to achieve in a day, a week, a month, 3 months, 6 months, by the end of the year. When you get there, you’ll have a lot to show for it! If you want to be a novelist,  i strongly suggest you begin with a goal stating how many words you will write in a day. People ask me how i write so many books. The answer is one day at a time.

Have the best year yet!   : )