Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Set Priorities for the New Year

Set priorities! Achieve goals, ignite career, sell books, enjoy life!

Sunny Nash, Author-Journalist
Sunny Nash, Author-Journalist

New Year resolutions are for other people. I set priorities that change as life changes to reach my goals.

Yes, it is coming upon that time again--the Holidays, eating too much and never-to-be-kept New Year's resolutions that do not work. 

When I first started my career, I made resolutions for everything from how many pages I would produce to how many query letters I would send out. Then I discovered resolutions were like promises--often made hurriedly to have something to recite at a New Year's Eve party or to my colleagues after the holiday--made to be broken. A popular new year resolution I hear people make, year after year, is to lose weight. Why? So you can fit into some long-out-of-style, ugly-by-current-standards outfit in the back of the closet? 

Read what people have said about new year resolutions.

Each day of the new year, I have a sub-set of my larger life or career goals, around which I set priorities for my day's activities. I continue this practice even as the year grows old. As a writer, I edit something or write a few new pages to be sure to further a project along each day. Usually, it is not my intention that day or any given day to finish anything, but I hope to push some work each day closer to the finish.

Set priorities to make sense of your life.﻿﻿﻿

scales of justice
Setting Priorities
Resemble Scales 
Some Priorities Weigh 
More Than Others
Going through life without priorities must be like tumbling around in a vacuum cleaner with dust swirling all around your head. How does one organize dust? And who would want to? 

One priority I carry from year to year is learning. 

Without setting priorities, nothing much is possible, one reason for setting them and changing them as as life changes. I can't tell someone else how to live but I can tell you how I try to manage my goals and priorities. My goals and priorities include those elements that I know, enjoy and do not feel are a burden. However, I try to include the unfamiliar as a stimulant to increase my interest in the activity. The unfamiliar area makes me stretch my imagination and knowledge. Don't be afraid of research.

pic of making a lise
Setting Priorities and Goals
Helps Organize
Thoughts and Plans
I start with a detailed list of things I want to accomplish. From my detailed list, I extract a simpler working list, not written in concrete because I know I must remain flexible. Life requires flexibility. Setting priorities is an ongoing task that I edit and change as necessary.

One reason I write lists by hand on a piece of paper with a pen or pencil is that the writing exercise places me in direct contact with my goals and priorities, making the process a very personal communication with my soul. The contact I feel between me and my list produces a certain harmony of thoughts.﻿