EXCUSES!

Monday morning. I’m drinking coffee getting ready to read my ten pages for the day. After, I’ll write for ten minutes, then get dressed and go to work. I’ve done this for so many years that it is a habit. It comes without much effort. In fact, sleeping in on weekends is now a difficult goal to achieve.

Working for someone else takes quite a bit of my time and come Monday evening I’ll be ready to eat dinner and get in bed. The act of work, whether physical or mental, is taxing and takes a lot out of me. I’m sure most people feel the same. I still have goals to achieve and unless it is the goal of getting more sleep I need to be awake to work toward it.

I have a goal setting nature. I put a thought out ahead and work toward it until it comes. Sometimes I put the goal aside and stop working on it. I know it’s there but, like some people say, life gets in the way. That’s a saying that masks an excuse.

Sure I have reasons for not working on my goals. I can justify them all I want, but it’s an excuse. We can argue semantics but the bottom line is no progress is being made. An example of this is my email campaign.

Several weeks ago I decided to begin an email campaign as a way to connect with readers and to promote my books. I have not set up an account yet. No progress made. The reason doesn’t matter. No progress has been made. I made excuses instead of making progress.

What to do about it? The goal remains in place; to establish a fan base for the books that I write. Maybe the other individual tasks need to be broken down to smaller bites. Instead of the task being; establish an email account, write an email invite subscribers, it could be simply; open an email account. One step at at time. A smaller bite and the meal can still be eaten.

Progress is its own reward and I’ve found that even small progress generates motivation. It’s much easier to work on small tasks and focus on a future not yet seen when I’m motivated.

Monday morning. I’m drinking coffee and becoming excited for the new week ahead, knowing that by writing this blog I’ve made a small amount of progress toward my worthy ideal, instead of making excuses.