Setting Yourself up for Success in 2016 - Setting and Keeping Goals

I hope you had a great 2015, but now it’s time to look towards 2016. If you are like most people, you had some good times and bad times during the year. Maybe you completed some goals or resolutions, but maybe you also developed some bad or addictive habits. It is easy to get into a routine that you don’t care for, but it is important to understand that habits can be broken, and new goals can be made.

With the beginning of a new year coming up, about half of the United States makes some sort of New Year’s Resolution. Most of these resolutions are not seen through fruition, however, they are much more likely to be completed if they are written down.

Perhaps one of the best type of goals you can make is a flexible or easy daily goal. This can be as simple as doing 5 minutes of stretching when you wake up every morning. The point is, it’s something that starts you right, is not difficult, and feels good having completed your first task of the day. You can also use this for larger goals in tandem. For instance, if you want to lose 25 pounds, you don’t have to do it all in one week. You can, and should, space it out by focusing on modifying the habits that allowed you to gain weight. Maybe it’s as simple as replacing 1 soda per day with a glass of water. Might not be the biggest change, but it adds up over time.

You don’t have to start on every single goal at once. By taking on too much, you risk not doing anything. You can start small, and once you master one goal, move on to the next goal. Or, you might make new goals every quarter instead of just once per year.

A great idea is to reward yourself along the way. Once you’ve completed a month’s worth of your goal, or goals, give yourself a reward. Make sure it’s something you enjoy instead of something that will either break your goal or revert to a habit you don’t necessarily want. It might be something you have been wanting or needing for a while, but the completion of your goal gives you permission to finally do it.

Make the reward another type of benefit. For instance, if your goal is to eat something healthy every day so that you can lose weight, you might reward yourself with that blender or appliance you’ve been wanting. This might help you feel great about all that you have accomplished and will contribute to your success in the end result.

Tracking your progress is another great way to figure out when you earned your reward and how far you have come. If you get off track of your goal, or miss a day, know that it’s ok and keep trying. You've probably made some progress, and keeping a log will help you realize that.

Make each relapse a competition. If you successfully completed 12 days of your goal before you missed a day, try for 15 days in a row. Just keep pushing yourself. You’ll benefit even if you only completed 5 days the next time. Just try to make it a fun competition with yourself and don't get down on yourself for being human and making mistakes. At least you are one of the few people that are actually trying to get back up and keep improving yourself.

Pursuing these goals with friends or family can really help you to stay accountable and accomplish more. It might also be fun to do beneficial activities together and grow together.

Good luck on your 2016 goals!

Andrew Brown

More Articles: 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tasha-eurich-phd/new-years-resolutions_b_4512944.html

http://life.gaiam.com/article/10-tips-help-you-keep-your-new-year-s-resolution

The Martian - Andy Weir's Story from Programmer to Bestseller

You may be aware of a little movie phenomenon called The Martian, in theaters as of October 2nd. The movie is actually based on the best-selling book by the same name. Below is the incredible story of how Andy Weir became a best-selling author with a top box office movie rights.

What is The Martian:

"When astronauts blast off from the planet Mars, they leave behind Mark Watney (Matt Damon), presumed dead after a fierce storm. With only a meager amount of supplies, the stranded visitor must utilize his wits and spirit to find a way to survive on the hostile planet. Meanwhile, back on Earth, members of NASA and a team of international scientists work tirelessly to bring him home, while his crew mates hatch their own plan for a daring rescue mission." (Wikipedia description)

The movie and book are very similar, however, this post will focus mainly about the book's rapid success. Once you start reading it, you immediately understand that Andy put an extensive amount of research into the science behind the story. In fact, the entire plot is based on real science available today. Essentially, it's a fake story about a real scenario based on existing technology.
          In order to keep it from sounding like a Wikipedia article, Andy modelled the main character after himself and included a ton of humor and wit into the story.

Summary of success:

Andy started by publishing chapters of The Martian on his website and gave it away for free. His readers asked that he put the book on Kindle and immediately sales took off. This got the attention of an agent, then a publisher, and finally movie rights all within a week! Sounds like a pretty good week if you ask me.

Life before The Martian:

Growing up, Andy loved to write fan fiction and read his dad’s sci-fi books. He also started computer programming around 9. In college and all throughout his 20’s, he wrote his first book and a few short stories. He then went full time into a programming job. From there, he held a few different positions until one day he was laid off with a large severance.

At this point, he decided to try writing again. He wrote another book and started a web comic. His website grew pretty fast with readers for the web comic. He eventually went back to programming once his savings got to his low predetermined amount. While working, he continued to post stories online from time to time.

He slowly accumulated readers over a several years and had about 50K readers for the web comic. At that point he wanted to get into more narrative fiction through short stories and novels. One of his early successes of writing, while still having a day job, was a short story called The Egg. His readers really enjoyed and shared it which helped his readership. Andy claims it's all luck because the story was so short and didn’t take him long to write. His reasoning is “It doesn’t require a big time commitment, [only about an hour and a half to read]. A lot of people take the entire content of the text, the whole story, and post it to their blog.” (InterviewingAuthors.com)

Andy then started on The Martian “by visualizing what it would be like to be an astronaut and live on Mars. What mishaps their might be and see if that could make a good story. Tons of research to be as realistic as possible. Mark is started out as, you know, me in my mind.   As the story progressed I started developing a unique character for Mark.” (InterviewingAuthors.com)

He posted e-versions of the chapters to his website since readers requested it. When readers were having issues downloading these onto their devices, they asked him to publish on Kindle. The problem here is that Andy previously gave his content away for free on his website, but with Kindle, he had to list it at the minimum price of $.99.

Ironically, more people bought it from Kindle than downloaded it for free from his site. This is most likely due to the power of Amazon with its recommendation features. It quickly moved up the rankings and essentially sold exponentially from there. The craziest part is, Andy didn’t really do any marketing for the book, which is a dream come true for most authors.

This is when the agent, publisher and movie rights approached him. He received a book and movie contract all in the same week; both in the low to mid six figures, according to The Washington Post reports.

"In fact, it was such a sudden launch into the big leagues that I literally had a difficult time believing it," Weir said in an interview on his site. "I actually worried it could all be an elaborate scam. So I guess that was my first reaction: "Is this really happening?'" (BusinessInsider.com)

Andy Weir’s Advice:

Writing an international bestseller usually has a ton of setbacks, and Andy’s story has plenty. For new authors, he has some lessons learned after going through his process.

Like most new authors, Andy had a day job and could only write in the evenings or the weekends. He didn’t really have a schedule and with the amount of research, it took him 3 years to write The Martian. Now that he is a full time writer, he writes during the time he would have been working at his previous job. His goal is to write a certain number of words per day regardless of quality. Once they are written, he can edit it later.

In fact, in the early versions of his The Martian, he gained a lot of science-minded readers who offered feedback. The part they helped him out the most was with the chemistry. Andy is more into space and physics than chemistry, so they actually helped him accurately revise his book.

Of course he gets writer’s block every now and then, but what he does is bracket off the to-do for the section and then continues moving forward. Additionally, when he stops for the day, he tries to stop at a place that interests him. It’s easier to start up again if you stop at an interesting point verses a dry point. Finally, if you have a story or part of a story in mind, just write it down to get it going.

With the internet, it’s really not necessary to go the traditional route of having an agent and publisher. One person can do it all and if it’s a good book, people will buy and refer. However, for his situation, having an agent helped him with the business side of everything.

Life After The Martian:

Naturally, Andy was propelled into money and fame with those major writing and movie contracts. He is now working on writing other books for the publisher that signed with him.

Since the book's sudden success, Andy has been invited to ComicCon, many NASA events, and tours. I look forward to his next venture and using his inspiring story to continue writing my books.

Buy the Book:

If you are interested in supporting Andy Weir, you can do so on Amazon: The Martian.

Sources:

 http://interviewingauthors.com/andy-weir-talent-that-reaches-mars-and-beyond/

http://www.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304558804579375161461671196

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-andy-weirs-the-martian-became-so-successful-2015-6