Why you Might Never Meet Your Writing Goals
We’re all spectacularly bad at sticking our plans
At the beginning of June I decided I would write a thousand publishable words each day of the month. I knew it would be tough, but didn’t think it was outside the realm of possibility. To add extra pressure, I announced this publicly to my blog subscribers and on Facebook.
Within a few days as I shoe-horned several lengthy quotations into a blog post and kidded myself that it counted as an extra 500 words, I knew it wasn’t going to happen.
Perhaps I should have made it 500 words a day instead of one thousand, or as my friend Michael suggested, given myself weekends off.
Either way, I had grossly overestimated my own self-discipline. I quietly dropped the goal and stopped even tracking my daily word count (I may have even gone several days without writing anything at all).
Let’s face it, sometimes it’s more convenient not to perceive things too accurately. Every day we deceive ourselves in a thousand little ways because reality, like the florescent lights that come on in a club at closing time, can be a bit too harsh on the ego.
