Are You Getting Things Done in Your Author Career?

So at the end of a year, we are often disappointed with what we failed to achieve the previous year. 

I have felt that pain. Author David Allen, in his book “Getting Things Done,” believes a lot of stress comes from us inappropriately managing inner commitments.  

Many authors, especially part-time authors, have day jobs or a business with daylight hour demands wrestling with our desire to achieve our own dreams. For me, it is like an actual battle between what we commit to and what we complete. David Allen believes all these unmet inner commitments form un-closed loops. These loops pull at our attention. I know this battle, finishing my series, creating an author course, that hour of undisturbed time with my kids, getting that paperback of a book loaded onto Amazon, getting… The list goes on and on. And every time we procrastinate on something that forms part of who we aspire to be, we are disappointing ourselves. 

I fight this battle daily and I see it in the lives of the authors I work with. As a movie lover, I recognise the best war time movies are about reclaiming independence and honour. No self-respecting army will allow an opposing army to invade and take over our plans, our workplace and families, and yet, in the real world, we willingly give up our dreams.

When I was younger, I marvelled at the fighting style of Steven Seagal, who is an American actor, screenwriter and martial artist. A 7th-dan black belt in aikido. The style had a grace and simplicity to it, which differed from the aggression I had seen in so many of the movies of the time. It comprised blending, turning, pivoting, circling, and spiralling, which seemed to frustrate a more aggressive opponent.

In my younger and more slender days, I knew that if a larger person should ever attack, I would have to rely on something more than just my own physical strength and yet some people seemed to fight battles with fewer injuries than others. This is what I loved about Steven Seagal. It was all about harnessing the energy of the opponent without aggressive force.

Although I never took to martial arts, I know that the demands of life can feel like an aggressive onslaught, one that strips away the time and thought needed to fulfil the dreams that make life meaningful. This is when we come up with the excuses that others will believe, but our minds do not. Our minds know that someone else’s dreams are occupying our time and resources and those un-closed loops are like little wood worms burrowing away at the part of us that recognises what peace feels like.

“This constant unproductive preoccupation with all the things we have to do is the single largest consumer of time and energy,” Kerry Gleeson.

Some people and many authors confuse peace with giving up. When we surrender, it brings with it a certain element of peace. But at what cost?

Instead of giving up, isn’t it better to find ways of reorganising your priorities, figuring out what the next steps are and then actually doing them? Because the things that we are DOING will ultimately form what we BECOME.

So this week, instead of just writing down your New Year’s resolution, rather take a little extra time to write down the specific action steps that you need to take to make progress in the area of your dream and then do something every day to make it happen. It is not a battle that you will need to fight only once to win this war. It takes daily effort and you do not have to sacrifice your daylight job or business. It is a campaign that will take you time. But if you take the time to plan your activities and actually do them even in small increments, at the end of the next year, I guarantee you will have come closer to the person you dream to tell you that you should be.