Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Goals, Plans, Resolutions and Priorities

The story is told of a business consultant who was speaking on time management. He sat a large glass bowl on the table and proceeded to put a number of large rocks in it until he could get no more large rocks in the bowl. He turned and asked the group of executives in front of him, "Is this bowl full?"

Everyone agreed that the bowl was full. After which, the man took a bag of pebbles and poured it into the bowl. He asked again, "Is this bowl full, now."

Again, the executives agreed. 

Then he took a bag of sand and poured it in around the rocks and the pebbles.

Now, he says to group, "What does this teach us?"

An eager young junior executive jumped up and said, "no matter how busy or day gets there's always room for more."

  "That is not the lesson," the business consultant said. "The lesson is that unless you put the big rocks in first, they will never fit."

The last couple of days we talked about setting goals and creating action plans. However, of equal importance is setting priorities.

 I had a list of projects that I posted the other day on this blog. Not all of those projects are of equal importance. Some are of greater importance than others. So, my next job is to prioritize those projects. In other words, I need to put the big rocks in first.

Editing

Here are my editing projects in order of priority

  1. Stormy Weather
  2. Death Gets an F
  3. (Blood) Red Sails in the Sunset
  4. Fangs for the Memories
Writing 

The following are my priorities for first draft writing.
  1. Finish writing "Static," a short story featuring the characters from Dark Side of the Moon.
  2. Finish writing Fangs for the Memories.
  3. Write Total Eclipse of the Moon.
  4. Write Green Green. 
  5. Write Weeping Willow
  6. Finish writing The Essence of Magic 
Next, comes the most time-consuming part of this process. I need to pull out a calendar and set a tentative schedule for doing all these things.  I'll get back to you on that in a couple of days.

Meanwhile, why don't you post some of your priorities for your writing?

    3 comments:

    Anne Duguid Knol said...

    Terri, you're so right but I daren't. Every time I have a few days off, I plan new writing projects only to shelve them immediately work starts again.
    I just love your enthusiasm.
    I will concentrate on my own editing projects though:

    1. Dangerous Decisions
    (Don't think they're dangerous enough)
    2. RadioNano
    (working title because it was a nanowrimo novel six years back)
    3. Flying Circus
    (neither about flying nor circuses--so how did that become its working title?!)

    Hopefully I'll get faster at this in time so I'll give myself till April for DD, till July for RadioNano and August for FC.

    They all need lots of rewriting so maybe that counts?

    Annie

    Terri main said...

    This is where prioritizing comes into play. When you get those few days off, you can plow right into your top priority item. Then leave it alone until you get the next one done. You aren't in a race or anything. Do what you can.

    I have a more flexible time schedule than many people do. I can get 15 minutes here and a half hour there and get in an hour or so of writing a day without much problem that way.

    I would say to beware of thinking you need hours or days to do any work. I wrote most of the novel that is coming out in February during a nanowrimo when I was sick and couldn't work more than 15-20 minutes at a time.

    A little bit of work adds up.

    Terri

    Roseanne Dowell said...

    If all the time you have is five, ten, or fifteen minutes to write do it! Set a goal to write every day, no matter how long. If you think five minutes isn't long enough so don't write, you'll never get any writing done. It's amazing how much you can write in five minutes. Good blog, Terri