What's Your Ambitious Goal for 2008?
January 15, 2008

Last year at this time I wrote a message to AWAI students and clients, as well as ETR readers. In it I said that I had made a very ambitious writing resolution for 2007. My goal was to write a poem a day for 365 days.

I got the idea from a playwright who had done something very similar: She wrote a play every day for a year.

I liked the boldness of that ambition. It seemed to me that it was the kind of goal that could change a life. It did for the playwright. One of the plays she wrote made her famous.

I have written poetry on and off my whole life, but never seriously. Maybe, I thought, I could improve my skills and even write some good poems this way. There were no guarantees, but I was optimistic that something good would come of it.

In revealing my personal goal, I recommended that AWAI students and clients set an equally ambitious goal related to their careers as future copywriters. I suggested that they read a new promotion every day. Or, if they were really gung ho, write one.

Many people who read that essay probably thought I was dreaming. "What's the point in making a resolution you can't possibly keep?" one person wrote me.

I was concerned - maybe even a little afraid - that the objective was too grandiose. And that I wouldn't follow through.

But I was also hopeful. The cleverness of the idea was the sheer size of it. By setting a super-sized career goal, I thought, maybe one could break through a lifetime of failed smaller objectives. A XXX-Large sized New Year's resolution might be big enough to crash through whatever psychological barriers that were holding one back.

That was the idea. And guess what? It worked for me. I did write 365 poems in 365 days. I skipped a few days when I was busy traveling, but I made up for them when I had spare time. Many of the poems I wrote were only a few lines. (I employed some Japanese stanzas - 3 and 5 lines - when I was far behind.) And many weren't very good. But at the end of the year I had more than 100 poems that were - according to a few editors I sent them to - good enough to publish.

So that's what I'm working on now: publishing them in literary journals and collecting them for my first book of poetry. It feels good to have accomplished this goal. It feels great to have improved my skills as a poet.

This brings us back to you. Did you read that essay? If so, did you set a goal?

If so, I would really like to hear about it. I'd like to know, in particular, how tough it was, how you coped with whatever setbacks you encountered, and what you gained from the experience.

If you took my specific suggestions and set reading or writing goals, tell your fellow blog readers how the experience improved your career. Are you more confident now? Tell us about it.

If you did not make a gargantuan resolution last year, why not make one for this year?

You know how quickly time flies. And with every passing year, it will move more quickly. Seize the day, as they say. Capture the moment. Make 2008 your year for taking a quantum leap forward.

If you missed that little essay, here is a part of it:

How did the playwright do it?

Did she wake up early every morning and get to it and not stop until she was done? Did she work on other projects first (she is also a screenwriter and novelist) and then get to her plays at night?

And how much did she write? According to the article, some of the plays were "only a few pages long" - but that's still an amazing accomplishment. She gave herself an almost unthinkable goal ... and went ahead and accomplished it.

But she did it smart. She didn't put a minimum length on each play. She let each one take its own length. That's a clever way to approach doing something great.

But it can be done by doing what she did: by narrowing the scope of the goal and focusing on quality rather than size.

Here are some other "unthinkably" big goals to consider:

posted by M. Masterson @ 10:11 AM,

1 Comments:

At 11:20 PM, Anonymous Dr. Jack said...

Dear Mr. Masterson, it seems to me that one challenge to keeping one's resolutions is not taking the time to consider how one will incorporate the resolution into one's daily life. It's so easy to just spout the words and even feel the emotion of resolve.

And yet, most of us do not keep our resolutions. In my opinion the fundamental error is that no thought is given to allocating the time (or other resource) needed throughout the year to fulfill one's resolution.

That's why I like your recommendation to start the day early.

I followed just this advice when I started my business in 2002 while wokring full-time. When I first resolved to start this business at the age of 40, I was concerned about how I could possibly reach my goals.

The person who inspired me - now, don't laugh - was Madeline Albright, our Secretary of State during the Clinton years. I had remembered that when during an interview she was asked how she had managed to get a Ph.D. (in foreign affairs, I believe) while being a mother of three, she said that she made a habit of rising at 5am each day to study and write.

So, when I made my decision to start my business in 2002, I thought, "If Madeline could do it, so can I." I did and within 27 months left work as an employee for good.

I am not as fast as Early to Rise, but we will hit 2MM this year. And the sky's the limit.

I want to thank you for your continuing inspiration to me.

Take care.
Dr. Jack

PS: One of my mottos for product development is, "There always is a better way." To keep this in the top of my consciousness, I will reprint Porter Stansberry's comment regarding your advice to him to the effect of what would he do if you had a gun to his head and his life depended on coming up with a better idea. I like that. I'm sure that keeping that on the wall in front of me will add millions to my bottom line in the years to come.

 

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