Plans for January, Smarter Planning

Happy New Year! It’s officially 2016, and I can’t get wait to get started.

If you’re like me, you’ve probably been planning for the new year for weeks now. If you’re not like me, then you’re in the majority. I have a terrible habit of planning more than I work sometimes, and never more than at the new year.

I’m working on that. But planning has been important for the past year. 2015 was what I call a foundation building year. I wrote all of the content for Days, and lots of other collections that need work still. I worked hard on social media, and met so many great people. I launched Thirty Days, Thirty Ideas, and now I’m ready to collect it into a book. I finished Broken Patterns. of course. Foundation years are important, but they are taxing for an impatient person like me. It made things easier bear, having an idea where the finish line would be.

For now, though, there’s no one better to talk to about planning than a planner addict. I’ve tried everything. The problem is, a lot of these awesome planning tips don’t work long term. They either distract or are too damn complicated to be worth the trouble.

We’ll be talking about planning that works around children, day jobs and the terrible habits of an adult with ADD. If these ideas work for me they’ll work for you, because you’re probably not as flighty as I am and you can’t be worse.

We’ll begin in earnest on Sunday, but let’s start with a quick tip. Today is the day most people make New Years Resolutions. Don’t. Make goals. Real goals with a real game plan, not some vague wish. Today, think about where you’d like to be in a year. Think about your family, your personal care and your writing. Personally, I have a ton of goals for the year. Honestly, more than I really care to list here.  Instead, I’d like to share my major business goals. Each of these goals has a whole page of little steps, but that’s rather boring.

• Make actionable and inspiring content for you guys here. This will include posts, printables, and more information built in to my newsletter, Paper Beats World. One way I’m already doing that is by publishing Thirty Days, Thirty Ideas in January. Don’t forget, if you pre order it you can get it for free with the code 30one. It only works until the release date, January 21.
• Write awesome stories. Well, that’s my whole life, not just this year. I’m going to finish Starting Chains, and make a start on Missing Stitches. I’m also going to publish Days, which I might have mentioned about a thousand times. But, what I haven’t mentioned is the brand new surprise I’m planning. No idea of a time frame yet, but stay tuned.
• Start making money from my writing, so that someday I can write full time. As I mentioned before, I made no money during the past year of banging my head against the door of traditional publishing. I bet that indie writing will be better for me, but I guess we’ll see.

What are you planning for 2016? Will this be the year you get published? Or will it be a foundation building year like 2015 was for me?