(The sound of a pen scratching.) LOGO.
Hellooo everybody! Quick announcement! On Sunday, the 19th, I will be participating
in the Evergreen Writing Oasis virtual retreat. The Evergreen Writing
Oasis virtual retreat is - as you can assume - a virtual writing retreat. Most of
you know that many writing events and retreats have been cancelled due to
COVID, so these amazing women decided to hold one online. I will be hosting a
panel alongside romance author Erin Kinsella all about the critique partner
and beta reader process. It's going to be a ton of fun!
You should definitely tune in! A huge thank you to Tamara Woods for inviting
me to speak at this event - I am so honored! And if you guys want more
details, I have all the info listed below! On to today's topic! A lot of you guys
already know that I'm really big on time management and productivity. I kind of
have to be if I want to juggle writing books, making videos, being a caregiver,
managing a business, and running a house. Because my time is my most valuable
resource, and I need to get a lot of shit done, I have a super detailed and super
effective goal-setting process. I started working towards setting quantifiable,
attainable goals when I was nineteen (19). Over the last decade, I have since
refined this process, and now per your request, I am breaking it down for you
today. Before we get started, my upcoming dark fantasy romance novel The
Savior’s Sister is available for pre-order in ebook, paperback, and
hardback. And I am hosting a massive, huge, amazing presale giveaway! Everyone who
pre-orders TSS is eligible to enter the giveaway. You will receive a five (5) chapter
teaser of TSS, plus you can possibly walk away with a bunch of prizes! I'm handing
out over thirty-five (35) of ‘em! I just so happen to be dishing out one of those prizes at
the end of today's video, and that winner will be walking away with a signed copy
of Little Birds - a short story anthology by best-selling author and Youtuber
Hannah Lee Kidder. Do you want to win Little Birds? I know you do!
It's written all over your face! If you want to see if you've won, stick around
until the end of this video. I'll be making the announcement then. While
you're here, be sure to subscribe to my channel and ring that bell! I give you
writing advice. I give you publishing advice. I've got lots of sarcasm and
silliness. We have a good time here! I post videos on Wednesdays, with bonus
content on Mondays, so be sure to subscribe - ‘cause I said so!
On to the goal setting! I'm first going to explain my goal setting method, and then
show you how I track my goals. First and foremost, what type of goals do I set? I
set quarterly goals, which are goals that you set every three months. You may be
familiar. One, because I talk about quarterly goals all the time on my
channel. And two, because quarterly goals are very common in corporate America.
It's very common for corporations to set company-wide quarterly goals. It's also
common for them to make their employees set their own quarterly goals. And the
reason it's so common is because it's very effective. Yearly goals don't
usually work because you've got too long of a timeframe there. You have 365 days
to dick around. On the flip side, monthly time frames are too short.
An unexpected bump in the road can completely destroy your productivity, and
if that happens, it's more of a stressor than it is a motivator. Quarterly goals
tend to be the perfect amount of time. It's short enough where the pressure’s on,
but there's some wiggle room just in case life gets in the way. The biggest
benefit of quarterly goals is that they allow you to break up your major goals
into smaller parts. Say your goal is to write a book. That can be really daunting,
and it's hard to know where to start. With the quarterly goal method, you can
instead say that you want to write 100 pages in 3 months. That's still a
challenging goal, but it's not too overwhelming. And on top of that, it's
quantifiable, attainable, and trackable. How are my quarterly goals different
from the standard or corporate quarterly goal method? The first thing is criteria.
Some people only create writing-specific goals, or they only create business goals,
or they only create personal goals. My quarterly goals are all of the above. I
do not set limitations regarding what can or cannot be a goal.
I want to improve all facets of my life, and thus my quarterly goals are very
eclectic. The second thing is the cap. Most people only create a handful of
goals, whereas I create a lot. I make sure each
quarter consists of about 15 to 25 goals, though I usually settle around 20 goals.
Lastly, we've got the concept of winning or losing. It's not enough to create a
list - you have to create an incentive for following that list. Because of this, I
decided to create the idea of winning a quarter or losing a quarter. “But Jenna,
it's obvious what would constitute as a win! You have to complete all the goals
on your list, right?” Wrong. Like I said, my list can contain anywhere from 15 to 25
goals, and requiring yourself to complete all of those goals is setting yourself
up for failure. I found that a much more realistic
system is to require yourself to complete at least half the goals on the
list. That means if you got 20 goals, you have to complete at least 10 goals that
quarter. This is still challenging, but it's not unrealistic. It comes out to
about one goal a week at a minimum, and it gives you wiggle room to shift focus
between your goals. If you want to give yourself some extra incentive, make your
quarterly goals public. I share mine on social media, and with each new quarter, I
announce whether I've won or I've lost. This lights a major fire under my ass,
because I do NOT want to announce to thousands of people, “Hey, guess what guys?
I'm a loser!” Since I've made my quarterly goals public about six years ago, I have
only lost one quarter. This shit works! Now that you know all about my quarterly
goal method, let's move on to setting the goals. I only use two things when setting
and managing my goals. Number one is the Notes app on my phone. You don't have to
use the Notes app, but I do recommend you keep your goals on your phone. That way
they're on you at all times. Number two is a planner. I personally use
the Clever Fox Ultimate Achiever’s Goal Planner. It is a quarterly planner and
it's specifically for people who set quarterly goals, so it is perfect for
this method. This is my planner from last quarter. I will be breaking in my planner
for this quarter a little bit later in this video.
If you're interested in getting a quarterly planner, or any of the planners
that Clever Fox has, I do have an affiliate link where you can get 10% off.
Please be aware that an affiliate link means I receive a small commission per
sale. If you're not comfortable with that, you don't have to click the affiliate
link. You don't have to use the discount. You don't have to buy anything from
Clever Fox at all! But please know I do not affiliate myself with companies that
I do not personally use or recommend. This is my planner that I paid for
myself, so yeah - I use it. For now, we're gonna put the planner aside and focus on
the Notes app. I'm going to skip over to the screen view for this step. For the
sake of this video, I'm going to be using a Word doc, but please keep in mind that
I do recommend using an app on your phone. All right, I've got my document
open. It's time to set some goals! And I go about this by asking myself five
questions. The first and most obvious question is what are my writing goals?
Now remember, our goals need to be quantifiable and challenging but
attainable. So I'm going to start with ‘write 100 pages of TSA.’ Now I move on to
the second question: what are my business or platform goals? As you guys know,
writing is a business, so you're gonna have some author platform and marketing,
or accounting, or business goals in the mix. I want to update my mailing list.
All right, we're done. As you can see, I've got a lot of business goals ahead of me,
and all of these are trackable. Now, we move on to the third question. This is a
VERY important one that a lot of people overlook. What are things I'm prone to
forgetting? I'm a really busy person and sometimes I develop tunnel vision and
completely forget about activities that need to get done. Thus, I add those
activities to my quarterly goal list. That way, there's a constant reminder.
Okay, now it's time for the fourth question. What are some habits I'd like
to adopt? This is where I think about ways I want to improve my life. Things I'm
either not already doing or I'm not doing to the level I'd like. So a good
one is getting into the habit of exercising more regularly. And lastly, the
fifth question: what matters to me in my personal life? This is when I think about
my home, my family, my friends. Things that would make me happy, or improve my
overall life. All right. I've created my quarterly goals. At this
point, I read it over, check to see if any of my goals overlap, or if maybe some are
better suited for a later quarter. I'm pretty happy with this list, so I don't
think I'm going to make any changes. So at this point, I will put it on my phone
so I can track my goals throughout the quarter. But wait! There's more! Now that
I've created my list, it's time to move on to my Clever Fox Ultimate Achiever’s
Goal Planner. “But Jenna! Why do I need a planner if I've already made my list on
my phone?” For starters, the planner is way more in-depth. It not only lists your
goals - it also helps you plan your life down to the month, week and day. It allows
you to group your goals into categories, and it makes it much easier for you to
track your progress. I used to do my goal-setting exclusively through the
list on my phone, and it DID work. However, once I added the planner into the mix, my
productivity skyrocketed. I was getting 80% of my goals accomplished as opposed
to the usual 50%. Thus, the list on my phone exists so I can refer to it if I'm
out and about. Otherwise, if I'm at home, I use the planner. Let's switch over to a
view of my planner and get this shit started. This is how Clever Fox sends out
the planner. It comes in this beautiful black box. You open it up and it's got a
bunch of goodies. Of course, we have the planner itself, and we've got a bunch of
adorable stickers! Cracking open the planner, the first thing you'll see are
the quarterly goal pages. Clever Fox divides them into categories
where it's four goals to a page. I like to take my existing quarterly goal list
and lump the goals into like categories. This is how it looks once you've
finished, and you do the same thing on the other quarterly goal setting pages.
Moving on, we hit the monthly calendar. Now, this is the least useful part of the
planner in my opinion. I don't think it's super important to my personal goal
setting method, so I just like to label the existing appointments or events that
I already have going on within the month. I usually label them with the
corresponding stickers. And here we go! This is what my monthly calendar looks
like once I'm all done. Next up is my favorite part, which is weekly planning.
This is where I reference my quarterly goals and decide what I'm going to
tackle in a particular week. In my world, all my weeks begin on Sunday, so I plan
the following week every single Saturday. I do not skip ahead and plan weeks in
the distant future. This is because I'm not only a writer and business owner, I'm
also a caregiver. My fiancé suffers from CRPS, and his health is very fickle. I
don't know how he's gonna be feeling in the next two weeks or three weeks, thus I
plan each week as it comes based on how he's doing right now and what I can
realistically fit into my schedule. So, in this section, you've got a few tasks. You
list your week's milestones, which is where I reference which quarterly goals
or major tasks I want to focus on this week. Then you've got a work to-do list
where you list the different work-related items you're going to be
doing this week. I'm going to keep this brief, because I'm just trying to give
you an overview here. We have the personal to-do list - I use this to mark
any appointments or events that are going down, and then the habits and
skills list. This is where I list anything that I want to make a recurring
task throughout my week like exercising, walking the dog, Cliff’s physical therapy,
and so on. The right-hand page is where you track your goals throughout the week,
so I won't have anything to fill out right now. But throughout the week I'm
going to be listing whether or not I reached my milestones, what my three
biggest wins were, what made me happy, what I learned, and
so on. It is super helpful for tracking your goals throughout the week. Lastly, we
have the daily planner. I plan each day the night before, and again I look at my
weekly plan and goals, and any appointments I have going on when
considering what I'm going to tackle that day. And of course, you can decorate
your planner with stickers which is super fun - just don't get so into it that
you end up wasting hours planning your day as opposed to actually accomplishing
the things in your planner. This usually only takes about 10 minutes every night,
tops. It's super easy to do and it sets you up for success! As the day goes on, I
track my accomplishments. If I accomplish something from my weekly list, I flip
back to that section and mark it as done. And of course, if I accomplish something
from my quarterly goals, I mark it as done both in my planner and on my phone.
Wasn't that fun? Like I already mentioned, I was doing just fine with my goal
setting when I was just referring to a list on my phone. However, now that I've
included the planner, I'm slaying shit! I'm averaging 70% to 80% of my
goals completed every three months. I am much more productive, plus I have a lot
more free time that I can spend with Cliff and Buttercup! Again, this is my
personal method. You don't have to adopt it. Do whatever you want. But if you take
one thing away from this, please note that your quarterly goals should be
attainable and quantifiable. Do not simply say ‘exercise,’ or ‘write a book.’ Give
yourself smaller, digestible goals that you can track. ‘Exercise three times a
week.’ ‘Write 50 pages.’ ‘Go out with friends once a week,’ and so on. This will not only
make it easier for you to follow your goals, it'll make it easier for you to
achieve them. So that's all I got for today, which means it's time to hand out
a prize! The Savior’s Sister is currently available for pre-order, and
everyone who pre-orders a copy is welcome to enter my pre-sale giveaway!
Enter the giveaway and you can win awesome prizes like a signed copy of
Little Birds by fellow Youtuber Hannah Lee Kidder. And one person is walking
away with their copy right now! The winner is...this person! Thank you, thank
you, thank you, thank you SO much for pre-ordering TSS! It means the world to
me! And thank you to Hannah Lee Kidder for always supporting my channel,
and my books, and my platform! You are the BEST! If you want a chance to win
tons of prizes, and if you want to win an amazing book, pre-order The Savior’s Sister!
I have all the information listed below! And then after you pre-order, enter the
giveaway. Get on it! Do it! I said so! You'll love it! Yeah!
Don't forget to subscribe to my channel! I post new videos on Wednesdays, and if
you want to be alerted as SOON as I upload, ring that bell! And be sure to
follow me on social media! I'm on Instagram, Tumblr, Facebook - and of course,
you can tweet me @JennaMoreci! Bye! (Male Voice) You've read Tobias's story. Now it's time
for Leila’s! The Savior’s Sister, coming soon...