I actually heard something interesting about goals this past week about goals. I think we’ve all heard of SMART goals, which is an acronym that is meant to help you create achievable goals.

My boss shared with us a different acronym that I think is especially fitting for us as bloggers and writers: DUMB goals.

D—dream-driven (drives you to make a difference in your life)

U—uplifting (inspires rather than makes you critical of yourself)

M—method-friendly (something you can track)

B—behavior-driven (involves changing things you can control)

Whitney:

For me, if I think of my goals as DUMB goals, I can remind myself why I even bother setting goals. I mean, what do I really want? What drives me to do what I do? I think the main drive is that I’ve worked on my manuscript for so long that I want to see it finally come to fruition; in print and in my hands. Maybe prove to myself that I’m a good storyteller. Money would be nice, but it’s not enough to drive me, but rather an additional stress to add to the list.

As for my September goals, I think I did fairly well! I didn’t cross stitch at all but I currently have a project underway. I also feel like I’m more consistent with posting on Wit&Travesty and what’s more important is that I’ve done better with reaching out to other bloggers and writers to support them and as a result make new friends and contacts.

My grand total for words written (rewritten) was 4,593 words. It equals to 2 chapters. Thanks writing group for keeping me grounded and motivated to do more! I didn’t reach my writing goal, but I know it was because we only met twice this month rather than four times this month. I might stretch myself to going back to four meetings because it helps me make huge leaps in my manuscript.

Goals for October

• Rock my Halloween costume
• Cross stitch at least one sampler
• Write 10,000 words or edit 4 chapters
• Meet 3-4 times as a writing group
• Read 3 Indie books from friends and review them

Rewards for October Goals

• Super fun date night with the Travesty
• This fun-looking Spider Gwen tank. (Anyone else a fan of Spider Gwen?)
• Get a few steps closer to being half-way done with draft 2

Travis:

Hi there, everyone! September just blew right by, didn’t it? I love it, and I hate it. “Never enough hours in the day,” and all that. I stepped up from last month, and wrote with much better consistency, though I didn’t do nearly as much story writing as I’d have liked. But I’m comfortable with that as long as I’m on top of my class work.

A decent share of my writing was scripts for my first foray into producing videos for Youtube, which are geared toward my other hobby, gaming. So September having gone the way it did, I’ll be sticking by that goal to write every day.

For my part, my reward for October will be a month-long internet upgrade. I’ve been dying to try out Google Fiber’s gigabit internet, and November is going to be a good month for it, with some classes slackening off, and new Youtube doodads to test out.

Have any stellar goals for the month? Share below!