There’s a crucial difference between setting your 2011 your brand-building goals and reviewing your brand-building goals.
The difference between setting and reviewing your writing and brand-building goals can mean the difference between achieving your goals or letting another year go by without significant progress!
It’s never too early to review your goals, and it’s impossible to review them too often.
I recommend you commit to reviewing your writing and brand-building goals at the following intervals:
- Now, and in six months. Start now–today–and reconfirm your 2011 writing and brand build goals. Then, just before you break for the Fourth of July festivities, schedule time to take an in-depth look at your progress achieving your 2011 goals.
- Monthly. Set 45-minutes to an hour aside for a review of each month’s progress towards your goals on the last Friday of each month. Schedule an appointment with yourself (or your coach). Or, if you’re using a Google Calendar, set time aside to review your progress during the previous month, and goals for the next month.
- Quarterly. Schedule a longer, in-depth, 90-minute review of your goals and progress on the first Monday of each quarter. Review your experiences during each of the previous three months, as the year rolls by, compare each quarter’s accomplishments to the previous quarters. Your quarterly review will provide a different view of your accomplishments, issues, and trends than your monthly reviews.
Getting started
Here’s why you have to immediately review your 2011 writing and personal branding goals; you have to reconfirm their relevance and practicality.
- Relevance. The first test is to review the relevance of each goal to your long-term writing and personal branding goals. How does each goal contribute to your long term? Start by prioritizing each goal, ranking each on a scale of 1 to 10. If some of your goals aren’t absolutely essential, you may want to prune your list, increasing the likelihood of achieving your most important goals.
- Practicality. In the end-of-the-year enthusiasm often encountered each December, it’s easy to bite-off more than you can chew. Combine the optimism of a fresh start and the realization that you didn’t accomplish everything you wanted the previous year, with the frenzy of new personal branding tools, and over-commitment is likely to result.
So, start now by reaffirming the relevance and practicality of your goals, and plan to review your progress toward each goal during the first week of July. And, take a few minutes more to schedule a 6-month review session immediately before you break for the Fourth of July.
When July rolls around, reconfirm that your goals remain relevant and practical, and that the amount of effort you invested in achieving each goal is proportional to its brand-building benefits.
Monthly reviews
Your monthly reviews are the building blocks of your writing, publishing, and brand-building success. Your monthly reviews are likely to be your most detailed reviews, since they look backwards as well as forwards.
- Looking back. Start by reviewing the progress you’ve made on each of your goals. This helps keep you on focused on your long-term goals, and helps you track your progress.
- Looking forward. Next, set specific, actionable goals for the upcoming month, including deadlines for each writing or brand-building task.
By identifying specific tasks for the upcoming month, you gain the ability to track your progress in clear and obvious measurable terms.
- WRONG WAY to state monthly goals. A goal like blog more often next month is a “wish” more than a guide to action. It doesn’t provide you with an accountable goal you can measure at the end of the month.
- BETTER WAY to state monthly goals. On the other hand, a specific commitment, like create 3 new blog posts during February, is a measurable goal that you either achieve or don’t achieve. You may achieve it, or you may not, but–at least–you can measure your progress.
And–most important–if you didn’t achieve your goal, you can ask: “Why not?”
Asking the Why not? question begs the follow-up question: What do I have to do next month in order to create 3 new blog posts?
Quarterly reviews
Quarterly reviews provide a longer-range view of your progress than you can obtain from your monthly reviews.
Trends buried within monthly reviews become more obvious when you take examine your notes, or impressions, gained during your previous monthly reviews. The information gained during your quarterly reviews will make it easier for you to take remedial action:
If you’re consistently failing to make significant progress on one of your goals, it may be because you need to obtain qualified help, or acquire new tools, to get back on schedule.
On the other hand, if you consistently experience frustration or difficulty making progress towards one of your goals, but you’re making great progress on other goals, you might want to revisit the relevance and practicality of the goal that continues to frustrate you.
It may be better to put-off a goal rather than frustrate and demoralize your entire writing, publishing, and brand-building program.
Taking action
So, are you ready to commit to immediately reviewing your 2011 writing, publishing, and personal branding goals, and commit to follow-up monthly and quarterly reviews during 2011? If you’re ready, is there something I can do to help you succeed? Or, if you’re still not convinced, why not? Share your commitment, concerns, and questions below, as comments.
Author:
Roger C. Parker is a book coach who blogs every weekday and helps readers choose the right article, book, & event titles for personal branding success.
