variety

I’m a goal-oriented person, and since the beginning of last year have had a goal of writing 10,000 words per week. I rather logically figured that the way to do this was to divide up 10,000 words by seven and write about 1,429 words per day. (I eventually rounded this up to 1,500 words per day.)

But I saw a new idea last week and decided to try it this week, especially since a friend and I decided to do sprints. This author had a variable goal. He wrote 5,000 words one day, then 2,000 words the next. The following day, 5,000 words, then 2,000.

This was interesting for a few reasons. First, in four days, that’s 14,000 words done. I’m not done with the week but am more than 20,000 words—double my normal goal. Second, the pace has this built-in feeling of challenge, then reprieve.

Maybe I’m a bit of a masochist, but seemed like a fun thing to try.

Well, so far so good. My word count has gone up tremendously, and honestly, writing 5,000 words in a day isn’t totally hard. I’ve done it before. (I’ve done more than that before.) And while I don’t know if this could be manageable for me in the long term I must say I’m super happy with the results of getting a whole lot more of my book written in a very short period of time.

So, while my usual advice of reaching a goal is to chunk it down into bite sized pieces, there is something to be said for challenges and variable daily goals. That way, you know in advance that you’ll have a harder day followed by more of a break.

If there’s something going on in your life that you want to accomplish, maybe see if there’s a way to work that idea in, whether in the short term or as the main way to get something done.