The Importance of Concrete Goals

Or fixing outcomes, not time

Today, I’d like to discuss and expand upon some ideas I wrote about in my creativity manual, The Keys to Prolific Creativity. One of the best ways to move forward with creative projects is to set appropriate and realistic goals. To that end, I’d like to compare two approaches to work: fixing time and fixing outcomes.

It is very difficult to do both of these things at once, but not impossible. If you want a spoiler, I believe that fixing outcomes is much more useful for productivity than fixing time.

Fixing time means, in this context, setting aside a certain amount of time to work and attempting to be productive throughout that time. This is a good general way to approach the problem of scheduling when you are busy. Most of us don’t have the liberty to set aside large chunks of time to work or think about projects (and let’s be honest, most of us would waste a good portion of that time if we had it). We have other obligations and other priorities we have to meet, too. So, it makes sense that if you want to make progress toward your creative goals, you should carefully set aside time to work.

The problem, however, is that not all time is equally productive. Simply “practicing” for an hour is not enough to make progress. I write in Keys about “zombie practicing,” a phenomenon in musicians where they play things they already know and have already mastered, essentially improving nothing and wasting their time. The point of practice is to increase mastery, and if you aren’t working on something you haven’t mastered yet, you aren’t really practicing. This is even true of cleaning for a recital—chances are if you haven’t played long gigs before, you haven’t mastered that aspect of performance.

Thus, practice sessions ought to have goals, such as mastering a particular passage or memorizing a section of music. This applies just as much to writing.

A writer who wants to make real progress towards his goals will have a word count goal for the day, not just hours set aside to have a word processor open. Stephen King, in his prime, wrote about 2,500 words per day. In his retirement, he says it is about 1,500. With that effort, all of his huge catalog has been realized, and it is, for a professional, a rather modest goal for the day. Walter B. Gibson, creator of The Shadow, reportedly wrote a full-length novel every month, pushing out 10,000 words a day in an era before word processors. You need not be so productive to become prolific, though, as King’s output testifies.

Thus, set aside time to work but also decide on a concrete goal for the writing session. 500 words is a great place to start if you are new to prose fiction. Once 500 words become easy to accomplish in your designated time, try for 1,000, then 1,500. I typically write between 1,500 and 3,000 words when I do a livewrite, and those last for about two hours. So, I think for writers who are still gaining experience, a 1,000-word per day goal, minimum, is achievable. That’s 365,000 words per year or three full-length novels. If you take author Brian Neimeier’s heuristic that every writer has about a million words worth of suck to get out of them, that means three years of practice will elevate your knowledge of the craft enough for you to be good, or at least good enough to do this thing for real.

If you are young, you should be able to do this in addition to whatever coursework you are pursuing, and I would say just writing 1,000 words per day would get you closer to your goals and teach you more heuristically than you would get out of a creative writing degree. For musicians, I might say something similar: you’d get more out of practicing two hours per day—two hours of real, deep practice—and gigging as much as possible than by spending 10 hours per day in a music degree program. I know because I sucked through most of my degree until I learned to practice well rather than just practice a lot, and I started gigging in every way I could to learn how to perform for an audience.

Keep in mind that not all words are equal, just as not all practice is equal. 1,000 bad words are still better than no words, and speed and quality go together; they are not in opposition. The more you hit that goal, the better those 1,000 words are going to be and the easier it will be to write them. Keep in mind sticking to a hard goal based on outcomes may mean you have to stay up late some nights to hit it. So be it! Sometimes, you must push, must suffer, for what you want. Sometimes, it is hard to focus, hard to tap the muse. Push anyway! Those sorts of sessions are often the most productive when it comes to improving mastery—making yourself better at the art.

Setting a time limit can mean cutting yourself off when you are in the zone and missing out on some great inspiration. It can have an inverted effect as well. Setting aside two hours for those 1,000 words might ensure that you always take two hours to hit your goal. Focusing on the goal, not the time (as time allows) will help you to avoid the creative version of Parkinson’s Law, that work expands to fill time.

I am an independent artist and musician. You can get my books by joining my Patreon or Ko-Fi, and you can listen to my current music on YouTube or buy my albums at BandCamp.

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