As the famous Yogi Berra once said, “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.” Too true.

Every year around this time, people start thinking about goals for the next year. I’m no different. I also usually set new goals every month, hell, every day sometimes. After all, every day is a new day, right? (Ah…coffee fueled optimism!)

The thing about goals is trying to follow them. I set some writing goals for this year and want to know how many I achieved?

One.

Yes, just one. However, I’m not going to beat myself up about it, because I ended up doing many more writing related things that I didn’t consciously set out to do. I do wish I had achieved more of the goals I had ACTUALLY set, but it was just one of those years. This year, I will set more goals and I will try to follow them. If other unanticipated things (good things, please!) happen along the way, that’ll be ok too.

One thing to keep in mind about goals is to make them attainable. There’s no point in setting goals that you’re not going to reach. So in the beginning, it’s best to keep them simple. Example, “I will write at least one page a day.” Seems simple, but as I learned this year, even the most simple goals can be easily thwarted. With that, another thing I’ve learned is to allow the flexibility of re-assessing your goals at any time. If it’s looking like you’re just not going to make it, re-adjust. No, it’s not cheating. If you don’t make all of your goals, that’s fine, but I think it’s important to make SOME of them. Achieving even just one of our goals, can give us that boost we need to keep going. And hey, we ALL need that boost from time to time.

I’m still compiling my list of short term and long term goals, but what about you? Do you usually come up with a list? If you did this year, how’d you do? Or do you think setting goals is a waste of time?