Читать книгу The 12 Week Year for Writers - Michael Lennington - Страница 18

It turns out that we can find the all-nighter dynamic at work everywhere we look. In many organizations, managers set annual goals only to realize as fall sets in that they are nowhere near hitting them. Then, in a flurry of last-minute activity, the team rushes to make up ground. It is no wonder that in so many companies the fourth quarter is the most profitable one. But if such great results were possible, why did it take until the fourth quarter for everyone to get it in gear? One of the most common obstacles to consistent execution is the dominance of annual thinking. When people make plans based around annual goals, they unwittingly drain the motivation and focus from most of the year.

Have you ever been at a New Year's Eve party where everyone made New Year's resolutions? Imagine that your friend decides that this is the year they'll finally start that book they've been talking about for so long. They look at the calendar and set themselves the goal of completing a draft of the book by the end of the year. The implicit assumption here is that a year is a long time, and at some point a vast amount of work will get done and they will finish the draft.

By the end of January or February, they find they're a bit behind, but they tell themselves they'll make it up over the next few months with a few great days or a great week “when other things settle down,” but, this lack of urgency takes its toll. With no single day requiring any specific progress, they don't worry about getting anything done from day to day. This pattern continues for months, until at some point they look at the calendar and realize that the year is almost gone and there is no book in sight.

Annual thinking is poisonous to productivity. In focusing our attention at the annual level, annual plans rob us of the urgency that consistent productivity requires. This is a big reason, among others, that most New Year's resolutions aren't worth the cocktail napkins they're written on. Action does not take place annually, it takes place week to week, day by day, and most importantly, in the moment. Every block on your calendar that says “writing” counts. Writers, especially, must not fall prey to magical thinking that assumes things “will get done later.”

Annual thinking also prevents us from focusing on the actual steps we need to take to get things done. In order to accomplish a big goal, you actually need to accomplish a lot of smaller goals. When you plan to “write a book,” you're not actually planning to write a book. What you're really doing is committing to planning, plotting, taking notes, creating characters, doing research, thinking hard about what you're trying to say and to whom, and writing a lot of sentences that appear one after the other in a particular order. Any plan that takes your focus away from those small steps that make up the journey is a bad plan.