5 steps to writing a SMART career plan
Lesson for the Week of May 6th, 2019
Irene S. Roth
Lesson for the Week of May 6th, 2019
Irene S. Roth
Writing down your five-year plan for your writing career is a way to convert your hopes and dreams into practical, actionable tasks that will make them a reality.
I’ve taken the SMART way to create a five-year writing plan. To set a SMART 5-year plan, please set Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic and Time Bound writing goals.
There are five steps to writing one, so let’s get started:
Step one: Set your macro goal
Consider what you want to achieve by writing this plan and write down your ultimate goal. This will help to set the direction for the rest of the plan and give the resulting micro goals purpose and meaning.
Make your big goal as specific as you can. A good specific writing goal is “I want to write five novels”, as opposed to the more general “I want to become a published author”.
Step two: Set your micro goals
Think about where you are now, and what you need to do to get to your end goal. Set incremental goals that will give you a regular sense of achievement, and make sure they are a good measurement of progress towards your overall aim. Here are a few micro goals to consider.
Finish Novel 1 and 2
Publish
Do PR for the books.
These kinds of micro goals will help give each day a sense of purpose as you move towards your end goal, while helping to keep your motivation high as you check measurable micro goals off your list.
Step three: Make it attainable
Make sure that the writing goals you set are attainable, or else you’ll run the risk of demoralising yourself. Setting a goal like ‘I will publish ten novels” is a big goal that might end up being unattainable. But if you aim at a realistic achievement you will get further faster without stressing yourself out.
Think about the practicalities that your plan requires, and list down everything you’ll need to do to help yourself succeed. It’s always a good idea to keep a running list of ‘operational’ tasks that are broken down into small, simple chunks so you keep a sense of momentum.
Step four: Make it realistic
Your goal has to be realistic given your time, knowledge and resources. This can be a hard thing for all of us to come to terms with. Realistic may have different meanings for different times in our lives. Make sure your goals are realistic given your aptitude, skills, experience and finances.
Step five: Make your goals time-bound
It’s important to commit your goals to a time frame so that you feel motivated to stay the course. You can run the risk of frittering time away if you have too much of it or set yourself up for failure if you don’t allow yourself enough.
By taking these steps, you will be setting attainable writing goals for five years. Take some time to do some brainstorming about this.
Your Assignment for this week
Please answer the following questions and post your responses under the lesson’s thread for this week.
- What are your macro writing goals for the next 5 years?
- What are your micro writing goals for the next year?
- Plot out your goals using a downloadable 5-year spreadsheet. Then fill it out and attach it to your responses for this week’s lesson.
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