by Glenn Magas

Created on: April 12, 2010

The basic idea in setting goals, whether they are career, financial, or personal, is to get things done. By setting clear-cut goals you define what you want and discover what it takes to achieve it. Success is a direct result of how organized and committed you are to achieve it – writing goals is the number one process in achieving anything. If you are a writer, writing your goals and setting realistic targets is a great way of making sure you will get things done.

If you are a responsible and committed writer, you will take ownership to what you do. By taking ownership you are required to be accountable to your responsibility. If you set specific goals and targets (whether they are personal writing goals or driven by a 2nd party), you will achieve more and get more things done.

By making it a good habit to write down your daily tasks, you can stick to your tasks as they relate directly to your overall goal. By the end of the day, assess what you have accomplished by crossing out the tasks that you achieved.

Here are 5 simple tips on setting goals and achieving realistic targets.

1. Daily Task List
2. Do the most important writing process first
3. Stay 100% productive
4. Reassess your writing production
5. End the night with new ideas for the next day

These simple writing tips can help you become a more efficient, productive, and accomplished writer.

1. Daily Task List

Keep your writing task list to 5 attainable tasks for the day. If you can fit more into the day after you cross off an item, then go ahead and do it. Psychologically, having 5 tasks a day is doable. Any more, might make you stressed, and if you don’t accomplish the 6th, 7th, or 10th task, it will make you feel like you did not accomplish anything. Keeping your list to 5 will allow you to focus on each and dedicate a certain amount of time to each.

A typical writing task list for this author is:
1) Research Keywords for articles and blog posts
2) Market articles and blog posts to social networks
3) Write 3 blog posts for 3 different blogs
4) Write 3 articles for Helium.com
5) New topic list (10 minimum topics)

2. Do the most important writing process first

The above task list is a typical Monday task list. The most important, and most tedious, time consuming, easy to procrastinate task, is #1 and #2. Therefore, these two tasks start off the day.

If you “Eat the Frog” you get rid of the most unpleasant task of your writing day.  Mark Twain referred to eating the

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