Goal Setting to Increase Productivity

It's been a little while since I posted anything, but it occurred to me today that I've been more productive in the past week than I have all year so far. Sure, I've been writing solidly every week for the past four months.

But in the last week I ended up with some serious medical bills to pay. My daughter broke her arm (she's fine!), but it wasn't a normal break. She needed minor surgery to put a pin into the bone in her wrist. Aside from being at the hospital and offline while she was there, I got the bill and nearly went into shock. I thought Medicare would cover all these things. Apparently not. The ambulance bill alone is higher than my mortgage payment  :(

So I got home, settled my daughter for her recovery phase and sat down to write.

Not only did I need to write enough to cover my normal bills and expenses, but now I had to write extra to help cover the excess bills that have now come in. So I created a daily income goal and I didn't stop until I reached it. Every day. Including today. And it's Sunday.

I usually work to a daily dollar-tally. When I reach that daily amount, I know I'll have enough to cover bills and expenses. But I'd increased my daily goal to help put towards the new bills. This meant I had to stay up later and write longer, or find a way to work smarter.

I'd love to be able to say I just worked smarter - but I actually did both. I worked longer hours than usual, but I also learned to group together various articles/topics that were similar to each other that came in from various clients. As the topics are so much alike, I could continue writing the same theme without having to stop to research or look up different information. It just let me rehash what I'd already written from a different perspective.

e.g.

Topic: Debt Reduction

Article 1: Top 5 Debt Reduction Tips
Article 2: Common Debt Reduction Mistakes
Article 3: Speed up Debt Reduction Tactics
Article 4: Creating an Effective Debt Reduction Plan
Article 5: Why Debt Reduction Tips Aren't Working for You

You get the idea. Instead of writing just one and then moving onto the next assignment on my schedule, I grouped together those that sat in the same, or similar, niches and worked on them in batches.

When I was done with a particular batch, I would add one more on a random topic in that same niche and add it to Constant Content. This increases the number of articles I have for sale on that site, which also increased my sales coming in from that source as well.

Once that was loaded to the marketplace, I'd write just one more on the same topic, but from a different perspective. This one gets loaded to HubPages in an attempt to raise my Google Adsense income that little bit more.

Not only did this let me get far more done than I normally would, but it taught me that my OLD daily dollar-tally was probably set too low.

Especially since I'm aware that working this way really does add up to more income for me without much more effort in the long run  :)