New Year’s Resolutions 2020

First, let me begin by saying I think New Year’s resolutions get a bad rap.

When we cross over into a new year, you’ll often hear comments like “I don’t believe in resolutions” or “no one ever keeps their resolutions” or “making resolutions is a waste of time.”

Making resolutions has turned into something to dread or to beat yourself up over if you don’t meet them. But when has making a goal ever been a bad thing? When has taking stock of your life and assessing what you want to accomplish ever truly hurt you?

Resolutions are nothing but goals, which all of us make in some form or fashion several times a year. The ones we make around January 1^st just tend to get a lot more spotlight shone on them.

I’m a big believer in making goals and freely admit that I don’t always accomplish my goals. Sometimes that’s because more time has past and that goal is no longer important to me or because I’ve struggled with how to attain the goal.

Either way, I don’t beat myself up over not reaching a goal, but use it as a chance to explore what stopped me from meeting the goal. If the goal is still important to me, understanding what is causing the resistance to meeting that goal is a huge step in refining and revising the goal, making it a SMARTer goal so I improve my chances of accomplishing it in the future.

So, what are my resolutions (aka goals) for 2020???

I won’t bore you with the goals I’ve set up for my personal life, but will instead focus on the goals I’ve set for myself as an author. I wanted these goals to reflect things I can truly have an impact on, so you won’t find selling a million books or becoming a New York Times bestseller on this list (although I’d love to do both).

For all of you who’ve read The Accidental Hero and fell in love with the guilt-ridden but sexy, bad-ass ex-Navy SEAL, Julian Montgomery and the alluring art conservator, Mena Nix, who stole his heart, I hope you’re excited by this news!!!

My author and writing goals are to complete the four book romantic suspense series that started with the book I published last summer, The Accidental Hero. In 2020, I plan to write and publish the next three books in that series.

Ambitious? Yes.

Stretch goal? Definitely so.

But I have a plan, which starts with my discovery of the Bullet Journal created by Ryder Carroll. I discovered this journal through Youtube suggestions and instantly fell in love with the concept.

Yes, I’m late coming to this party, but better late than never … right?

So, I’m diving head first into the deep end of BuJo!

I love it because it is adaptable to my personal style and preferences. I can design it so that it clearly lays out what is important to me and utilize it as a tracking mechanism for checking in on how I’m doing related to some of my longer term goals … like writing those 3 novels.

My Bujo is set up to help me be more intentional about the things I choose to do. Understanding what you need to do, what you should do and what you want to do and why is critical in helping me actually get stuff done.

Sometimes, when you delve into the why you want or should do something, you realize that it isn’t that vital or important to your life. With that revelation, you can quickly eliminate this faux goal and not waste any more time on i.

When you do discover that a goal has extreme importance to you, then that can help serve as a catalyst to action on accomplishing it.

In addition to setting up my Bujo in my Shinola notebook, I’ve also plotted out my writing days for the year based on known events and activities that I already know I have planned in 2020.

Completing Nanowrimo in November 2019 helped me in identifying that

1. I like to write a first draft as fast as possible, just to get the story down on paper,
2. My best ideas come out in the revision process which I typically do two rounds before handing it over to the editor, and
3. I only want to write one chapter per day.

While I love writing and producing novels, I have other interests and don’t want to lock myself up each night after my day job writing books. I want to have balance with enough free time to spend with family and friends, do other hobbies, or just veg out and binge play games on my ipad.

With these tools at my disposal, I feel like I’m setting myself up for success to accomplish my goal of publishing three books in 2020.

But if I hit a snag, no worries … there’s nothing wrong with course corrections as I push forward to accomplish my goals.

I wish you much success in accomplishing your goals (don’t call them resolutions) in 2020!!!