Set Small Goals. Meet. Repeat.

I’m reminded today of the importance of setting small goals. Setting small goals allows you to meet them and repeat them. This kind of slow, methodical progress isn’t very exciting, perhaps, but it is the best strategy for dealing with the dissertation.

When you set a small goal, you immediately feel capable of reaching it, and, in fact, you may over-reach it (meaning you end up doing more than you planned, moving further ahead than you thought.)

These kind of small victories are important for maintaining focus and motivation.

A good practice is to set a concrete and well defined goal for each 45 minute working session. Examples would be, "I will outline this chapter in the next 45 minutes" or "I will read these two articles in 45 minutes and make notes." Anything that is small enough to achieve, and important enough to be worth achieving is fair game for this type of goal setting.

When you set goals in 45 minute increments, you are very likely to find that you accomplish more each day. I’ve implemented this small goal/45 minute rule, myself, and it’s really helped boost my productivity even further.

If you don’t know how to make progress, set a small goal for your next 45 minutes. Meet. Repeat.

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