My month-end review reminded me we are one month into the second half of the year. Five months and counting until this year ends. Are you hitting your on-track markers? Or did you join the ranks of most of the resolution breakers and quit in February? Honestly, I don’t make resolutions. I prefer to set my goals, and work towards them. I change, adapt, or alter my trajectory as the weeks and months progress, and I determine how easy or difficult it is to move the needle. It is also the reason I conduct monthly reviews. I don’t consider goals an all-or-nothing proposition. Life is not a pass-fail class.

Instead, I assess whether the goal is severing me, and if not, I abandon it and replace it with a more appropriate goal. A better choice is to tweak my route, alter my expectations, or rework certain aspects of my game plan. The primary criteria I use when evaluating my goal quest is, am I making progress? Am I closer to attaining the prize than I was last month? If I’m not, and this happens more often than I care to admit, I look for bona fide reasons. I’m not interested in excuses but actual reasons. I did not hit my daily walking goal in July. The main reason I missed my target involved leg cramps and a tender Achilles bursitis. The treatment is rest. This goal requires modification until my condition resolves.

At the other end of the spectrum, my daily writing habit is alive and well. In July, hitting the goal felt too easy so, in August, I am raising my target word count. It won’t be anything crazy, but the idea is to increase the total words I write by 1% over the day before. I know it doesn’t sound exciting, and most people wouldn’t even notice. But let’s say I start day one and write 300 words. If I could sustain a measly daily increase of 1%, then on day 150, I would write 1,321 words, and on day 365, I would write a staggering 11,335 words. Yeah, I don’t see that happening either. Hitting 2,000 words in a single day, I would place firmly in the win column.

Are you making progress towards your goals?

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Keep on writing.

Jo Hawk The Writer