Realistic Daily Goals

The realistic daily goal works on one simple premise: it is easier to write 1,667 words every day for 30 days than 50,000 words in one day. A steady pace through the month will keep up momentum and guarantee progress while avoiding burn out.

To start with 50,000 words and 30 days is a daunting prospect. It’s exciting and intimidating all at the same time. To keep that excitement, increase that excitement and remove the intimidation we want to get to X words and 1 day. By identifying two things and doing a bit of math you too can apply this SoCNoC Secret.

You will need:

1. Number of minutes it takes you to write 500 words for a best case scenario.
2. Number of writing days (or hours per day) you have in June.
3. Calendar
4. Calculator
5. Pen & Paper

On a good SoCNoC day I can write 500 words in 15 minutes. I have been known to type out 500 words in 10 minutes during particularly intense word wars. A good way to find out how quickly you can write 500 words is to participate in a few word wars (see section TBD). On a bad day it can take up to an hour to pull those words onto the page. I’ve found a good average for me is 30 minutes, so I use a factor of 2 over my best case. You might find that you want a factor of 3 or 1.5. Use something that you think produces a realistic result.

[number of minutes to write 500 words, best case] x 2 = [number of minutes to write 500 words]

Now that you know how long it takes you to write 500 words you can simply multiply that time of minutes by 100 to find out how much time you need to find in June to reach 50,000 words. Working with 500 words for every 30 minutes I need to find 3,000 minutes in June. If I divide the number of minutes by 60 (minutes in an hour) I need to find 50 writing hours.

([number of minutes to write 500 words] x 100) / 60 = [number of writing hours needed]

That’s the first piece of the puzzle. The second piece is to find that number of writing hours in the month of June and try to spread them out over as many days as possible. Yeah, this is the hard bit.

In a perfect month you will simply be able to split your number of writing hours by 30. Some of you will have that perfect month. To find out if you’re one of those lucky few you need to assess your other commitments in June. Pull out the calendar and cross off any days that you won’t be able to do any writing. The remaining days are your writing days. Usually I can guarantee 25 writing days for a SoCNoC month, which means I have a daily hour quota of 2 hours.

[number of writing hours needed] / [number of writing days] = [daily hour quota]

Some of those writing days you won’t have the hours available to reach your identified daily hour quota, other days you’ll have more hours than your daily quota. The secret here is to keep as close to the daily quota as possible. For the days that you won’t be able to realistically reach the daily quota book it the most you can do and keep the excess hours to one side. Then have a look at the days where you can achieve more than your daily quota and distribute the excess hours evenly over these days.

Now that you know your daily hour quota for each writing day you can translate this into a daily word quota. If I have a 2 hour daily quota and can write 500 words in 30 minutes then I have a daily word quota of 2,000 words.

([daily hour quota] / [number of minutes to write 500 words]) x 500 = [daily word quota]

As the days go by new commitments will come up, some days you’ll meet your goals, some days you’ll exceed them and you’ll need to adjust your daily goals to fit the changing landscape of the month. This is the true secret of realistic daily goals: continuously reassess and adapt your goals.