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Mark Anderson Smith

Q2 Halfway point

May 12, 2021 by Mark Anderson Smith Leave a Comment

Q2_12_week_plan

Back in December 2020/January 2021 I wondered if the contracting and job markets in the UK would continue to be dead through till the summer. It seemed possible that I might have to go six months without working and so to put a plan in place to make constructive use of the time seemed sensible.

I used the 12 Week Year to motivate myself in Q1 of this year and then tried to learn from that experience in planning out Q2. The image above is the rough high level plan I put together. As with my first 12 week year plan, I’ve tried to use reasonable estimates, and take into consideration the crazy situation with the pandemic and how that has affected my family.

I’ve always got too many goals. But I’d rather acknowledge those goals and accept I can’t work towards them yet than attempt to bury them. I find if I do that I get distracted by them, unable to let them rest for a time. I wrote down everything I currently want to achieve, categorised them as this helps with prioritising the goals, then attempted to give a fair estimate of how long I thought they would each take. That gave me the immediate signal that I wasn’t going to get everything done!

As you can see, for a bunch of those goals, I didn’t even estimate a time suspecting they just would not be possible in the next 12 weeks.

Column titled Time estimated (hrs) was my original estimate for how long each goal would take. I took a couple of weeks off at the start and so only had 51 days left in the 12 weeks to use. It’s possible I made some over-estimates so took another look and put a slightly revised number under Ten week goals. I also ruthlessly focused on the goals I most wanted to achieve: writing goals, admin goals such as completing essential tax returns, and job hunting goals.

I’ve benefited from continuing regular exercise and so created a column to account for goals I would work on every day, allowing these to be properly factored in. If I spend one hour a day looking for a new job, and 45 minutes exercising, then I can multiply that by five days a week for ten weeks and ensure that time is not hidden from the final total.

Then, I’ve continued to track what time I’m spending.

I’m in my fourth week of ten remaining weeks (two weeks having been taken as holiday.) I’ve certainly made progress to a couple of the highest priority goals. After spending another 32 hours this quarter, I’ve completed first draft of 28 chapters of The Commands of Jesus, the follow up to 31 Days of Prayer.

I’ve installed a new template for my company website and written and edited several key pages.

I’ve also applied for 22 contracts and permanent jobs.

However, I’ve taken on a few things I wasn’t expecting, and hadn’t thought to include one crucial task that takes up a fair bit of time: sending out mailing letters and writing blog posts like this one!

Last quarter I had planned to spend more time training, but I ended up focusing on the writing goals. This quarter as I’ve stepped up job hunting, I’ve found myself also taking time for training that I hadn’t planned. So be it. The expectation is this will make finding a new contract or job easier so I trust it will be worth it.

For those that are waiting, I will be switching focus back to Fallen World once The Commands of Jesus draft is completed.

And that’s probably all I want to say for now.

Filed Under: 12 Week Year, 31 Days of Prayer, Goals, Writing

The 12 Week Year – a first quarter review

April 21, 2021 by Mark Anderson Smith 2 Comments

I recently finished my first 12 Week Year and wanted to review how it went to see if I could learn some lessons from the experience. If you’ve not read it, The 12 Week Year by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington proposes by working to a 12 week plan, you can get more done in those 12 weeks than some people manage in 12 months. I initially “read” the audiobook version, found it quite inspiring, and knowing I was likely to be out of work over the Winter, decided to try it.

Initial goals…

I started out with seven goals:

  1. 120000 first draft words written towards Fallen World and the third book in the Fallen Warriors trilogy
  2. 31 Days of Prayer finished, edited and published
  3. 100 Crazy Ideas to Fix the Economy finished, edited and published
  4. Declutter the garage
  5. Decorate our bedroom
  6. To use this 12 weeks as a benchmark, a learning experience. (I don’t know if I can achieve all of these goals, but to have made progress will be wonderful.)
  7. Train and upskill (Power BI, SSIS, etc)

While editing and publishing 31 Days of Prayer I decided to drop goal 3 and replace with a new one:

8. Write, edit and publish the sequel to 31DoP: The Commands of Jesus

Goal 6 was included to take pressure off myself. I know I can get totally obsessed with achieving a goal, and I needed to ensure I put my family first. I tried to be realistic with all the goals, to consider beforehand whether they were achievable in the time available, and to structure how I spent my time to avoid overdoing it.

In January 2021 we were in Lockdown here in Scotland. Not allowed to travel outside of our local area, not allowed to visit other people, restricted in leaving our house. My daughter was home schooling and my son is studying towards his university degree from home as well. Unlike during the first Lockdown last Spring when we could at least sit in the garden to get some relief, January and February were likely to be tough months, trapped inside.

I allowed myself a lot of leeway with my schedule. Determined I wasn’t going to beat myself up if circumstances changed, or I was needed to focus on my family. I aimed for a fairly low 6 hour a day schedule during the week. Every evening and weekend off from my goals. Even then, at that point, I thought the goals were achievable.

Initial thoughts…

Looking back, my initial thoughts on the 12 Week Year experiment were:

  • I feel that I allowed time to be wasted.
  • I was insufficiently disciplined with using my time.
  • I burned out after the second month and should have taken rest breaks.
  • I wasn’t able to measure some of the work I had to do like plotting the book.
  • I completely failed to track my time in the last week. I was mentally quite exhausted.

I saw this time wasting especially in the third block of four weeks. It may have been in part because I had not allowed any additional days off during the 12 weeks and burnt myself out. I found myself procrastinating in the mornings, starting later and later, then struggling to get going in the afternoons.

I also noticed I was spending a lot of time on my phone. Scrolling through Twitter, looking for something interesting, or searching my favourite websites for new articles to read. Again, possibly a form of procrastination.

While I made fairly good progress with writing in the first two four week blocks, I reached a point where the complex plot of Fallen World made me uncertain whether some of the characters could experience events in this book, and how that would impact their reactions to other events. I realised I needed to better understand the implications of the unfolding events which took time away from writing. But I struggled then as hours seemed to slip away and I felt I was making very slow progress. Writers put themselves into two groups: Plotters and Pantsers. Those who write a detailed plot before starting to write, and those who write by the seat of their pants! I tend to be one of the latter, though with Fallen Warriors and Fallen World I have ended up also writing detailed plots once I’ve reached a certain point in the story. And I had outlined stories for each character before I began the main work on Fallen World.

I felt so bad about how things were going that I even stopped tracking what I was spending time on in the last of the 12 weeks. I kept meaning to go back and work it out, but it never happened.

The goals…

Goal 1: 120,000 first draft words written towards Fallen World and the third book in the Fallen Warriors trilogy

I wrote 69,654 new words during the 12 weeks, slightly greater than half the target wordcount. 58% in fact. This measure did not take into account the time spent working on plot, which took up a fair bit of time in the third block of four weeks.

As you can see from above, I didn’t record any new words written in the last four week block.

Goal 2: 31 Days of Prayer finished, edited and published

I did not properly review how much time it took to do this – I had not included the work spent over the autumn and winter. So this meant I underestimated how much work would be needed for a follow up. However, this was a success and I’m so glad I set this target. I found the process of writing and editing 31 Days of Prayer deeply moving and a personal blessing. Also, by choosing to give this book away through Bookfunnel (you can download here), I’ve been able to add a hundred subscribers to my mailing list as a result!

Goal 3: 100 Crazy ideas to fix the economy finished, edited and published

My original intention was to complete this book once I’d finished 31 Days of Prayer, however as I worked on 31 Days of Prayer I found myself noting down over a dozen potential follow up prayer guides. I decided I would rather change the goal to focus on writing a sequel: The Commands of Jesus. I dropped this as a goal and did then make some progress on that follow up prayer guide which I’ll write up separately.

Goal 4: Declutter the garage

My intention was to tackle this on evenings and weekends. It was too cold and dark most evenings and we ended up working on this over about five weekends, spending on average two hours each weekend. While there is still work to do, it is now possible to find what we need in the garage. We’ll need to set time aside later in the year to finish the job.

Goal 5: Decorate our bedroom

I knew this was going to be disruptive and in the end I postponed this until week 13. I had hoped we might finish this in a week and then have a week off, but that was unrealistic. Even a slightly more realistic estimate had the work finishing on the Tuesday of the following week. We didn’t have a proper break in the end which does concern me looking forward to the next quarter. However, I did stop work early enough to take a break in the evenings most days and was able to enjoy some movies, rest up. We went on a lovely cycle ride that Friday (Easter Friday) I ended up doing tidy up bits over the rest of the second week. We’re now using the bedroom. there are four unfinished tasks still needing done and I’ve added them as “to dos” for this quarter.

Goal 6: To use this 12 weeks as a benchmark, a learning experience.

I feel quite positive about how the 12 weeks have gone. I’m unsure about how to fit holidays into this plan. I need to be careful to avoid burnout. I’ve not been closely following the advice in the book and need to review the book again to see if I can understand the method better.

Goal 7: Train and upskill (Power BI, SSIS, etc)

While I did start watching and practicing training videos, I stopped after the first week. I need to find a way to integrate such training into being beneficial for my writing or create a project that I really want to see finished as that would give me extra motivation to persevere. It is different when I’m working, but again, unless I have a reason to use a skill, I struggle to motivate myself to take time to learn it. I tend to learn by doing, and learn new skills normally because there is something I need to do that I don’t have the skill for. Time is so precious though that I struggle to trick myself into committing to something that I know is not currently important.

Some final thoughts…

I wasted a lot of time on social media, or as I’m starting to think of it – unsocial media. I don’t seem to handle social media very well. Originally I started using Facebook as a forum to share, but that ended up being all about me, and that didn’t seem healthy. Then I used it as a forum to discuss, and that was okay, though quite draining, and I’m not at all sure it was of any use to anyone. Then for the last couple of years I’ve used Facebook and Twitter as a forum to argue. And that has not been healthy at all.

So what do I do? I think I need to focus on my goals. To cease spending time on things that do not add value.
A friend said he was starting to pray through his Facebook friends list. That seemed like a positive thing to do.

I should be quite encouraged by the successes over this quarter. One book published, a substantial amount of words written. Valuable time spent working on a plot. Important family projects progressed. I’ve restarted my mailing list and grown it by 100 subscribers. To date, over 130 people have downloaded the first 31 Days of Prayer.

Looking ahead to what might be possible in a year… If I could write full time, it should be possible to write a minimum of 280,000 words in a year – that is first drafts of two novels! Also to possibly write and publish one short book each quarter, or at least publish two longer works and write and publish two shorter ones. That would be wonderful.

Filed Under: 12 Week Year, Goals, Writing

Double Your Salary …Without losing your soul!

June 25, 2019 by Mark Anderson Smith Leave a Comment

Picture of Hardback book: double your salary and ebook

I’m excited to share that the hardback of my next book: Double Your Salary …Without losing your soul! will be released for sale on 1st August 2019.

I believe that doubling your salary is possible when you understand who you are and what you are capable of. Sharing my story of how I doubled my salary three times, Double Your Salary also gives advice drawing on my experience, beliefs, theories and knowledge to enable you to do the same.

Book Description:
Doubling your salary is possible when you understand who you are and what you are capable of.

Like many people, Mark felt trapped in low paying jobs, struggling to get interviews. When he did, he was unable to prove he was the right person for the job.

Sharing the three goals that changed his life, Mark gives an honest and frank account of a journey to find purpose and meaning, revealing doubts and fears while giving advice and encouragement.

He shares his experience, his beliefs, his theories and knowledge, examining what he did, and why, to enable him to find his ideal career and ultimately double his salary three times. Each section is followed by prompts and suggestions to help you examine your life and plan for the future, in the hope this will help you on your journey and enable you to avoid the dangers that pursuing wealth can bring.

Double Your Salary seeks to motivate and encourage you to believe: You are capable of transforming your life!

The hardback edition will retail at £14.99 and can be ordered from all bookstores.

If you would like more information on the book or would like to interview the author, please use this contact form.

Filed Under: Double Your Salary, Goals Tagged With: career, discipline, Double Your Salary, faith, finances, goals, income, interviews, job interviews, jobs, motivation, salary, wages, work

40K

June 15, 2019 by Mark Anderson Smith Leave a Comment

Lightbox with #done

It might be that weekly posts are all I can manage until the first draft of Fallen Warriors Season Two is complete. I met my target of 10,000 words today and did manage to hit 2,000 words each day this week.

That feels good. An accomplishment.

I haven’t managed much else, publishing wise.

I kept a record of time spent writing and word count achieved. It’s interesting looking at the numbers:

Screenshot of wordcount achieved over past week

Three out of five days I took over four hours, the longest time being four hours, twenty five minutes. Then two days, today and yesterday almost half an hour faster on average.

My words per minute has really jumped around, with really slow points and then one half hour when I blitzed almost 500 words at a pace of 16 words each minute.

I’m only averaging around 8 words per minute though. That seems really slooow to me. It makes me more inclined to look at dictation.

Admittedly, the fact is I spend a lot of time just staring into space, thinking. So if you actually measured my typing speed when I was typing, it would likely be much faster. So dictation isn’t going to stop me needing to think and work through plot and character development.

But how much faster could it be?

Next week and the week after I’m not going to be able to write as much. I’m helping my parents move house and that needs to be my main priority. My word target for next week is just 7,000 words.

But I’m going to give Dragon dictation a go. Nuance offer a free one week trial of Dragon Anywhere and I’ve signed up this afternoon! This is an app you can install on Android or Apple phones and as long as you’ve an internet connection you can transcribe what you say.

Last week I bought The Writer’s Guide to Training Your Dragon: Using Speech Recognition Software to Dictate Your Book and Supercharge Your Writing Workflow by Scott Baker. I’m going to work through this while I get used to dictating and will let you know how I get on.

It might be too much to hope that I’ll exceed 7,000 words next week by starting to use dictation, but I’m hopeful. Even if I could reduce the time it takes to write the same amount of words, that would be a huge help and allow me to focus on other tasks I have waiting.

What helps you to write faster?

Filed Under: Fallen Warriors, Writing Tagged With: #FWS2, Dragon Anywhere, Dragon Dictate, Nuance, Scott Baker, wordcount

Progress

June 8, 2019 by Mark Anderson Smith Leave a Comment

The poem Progress by Mark Anderson Smith with a greyscale background of a wooden grid

I wrote last week that I was setting a new target to write 5,000 words a day.

Why do I do this to myself?

The results are in. I think I managed a thousand words one day that first half week, then I’ve managed 4,790 this week.

That’s not even a fifth of what I’d imagined might be possible.

I think it’s okay though. I’ve written several new scenes and expanded on both the character and plot for a main character in this new season. I’ve also broken out my initial synopsis and plan, using Scrivener, so that every key scene I’ve planned is in order, so that it will be easier to focus on a specific character’s story while writing.

If you are interested, after splitting out the synopsis and looking at what I feel I can actually use from my initial writing, and including the scenes written this week, I now have 30,292 words. My goal for Season Two is 120,000 words which would give 6 20K episodes. A bit shorter than Fallen Warriors, but with my publishers hat on, cheaper to print!

Since I started using Scrivener, I’ve found it really helpful for dealing with the complexity of the stories I want to tell. I can group scenes by chapters and by episodes, keeping the TV theme I’m using for the Fallen Warriors series. I can search for a character name and filter so that only scenes where they appear are shown. This allows me to read through their story and check I’ve covered everything I need to happen. Also so I can check their story is consistent all the way through.

I can add notes to each scene so i can remember why I wrote something, or add hyperlinks to research I’ve done. I can backup each scene individually as many times as I want. And I’m probably not even scratching the surface of what the application is capable of.

I’m still aiming to work up to 5,000 words a day, but am conscious that might not be possible unless I try something radical like switching to dictation. I’ve been looking into Dragon speech to text software, but at £350 for the professional edition which allows you to record and transcribe later, I’m hesitant to shell out that cash.

I think 2,000 words a day might be a more realistic daily target for the next month as another issue I’m facing is that I need to spend time setting up marketing and promotion of my next book: Double Your Salary. There is no point in publishing a book if I don’t make an effort to promote it, and it makes a lot of sense to start that promotion now.

I’ve been able to look at what writing 2,000 words a day might mean. I could finish the first draft of Fallen Warriors Season Two by mid August. That might then allow me to edit and ready for publication by Christmas, or if not, the three year anniversary of Season One’s publication date.

I would be happy with that.

I thank God for the progress I’ve been able to make. I’m conscious I’m still not really well. Finished the course of antibiotics, but am still coughing and my sinuses are full. If I could complete 10,000 words over next week, I would be delighted with that, especially if at the same time, I’m able to make progress towards promoting Double Your Salary.

I would appreciate your prayers.

Progress

I tell myself
my novel is a book
made up of words.
The first word
followed by another,
each word building
on the words before,
creating something of beauty,
of purpose,
of insight.
The novel does not yet exist.
But it will,
if I keep writing,
one word at a time,
until it is finished.

Copyright 2019 Mark Anderson Smith

Filed Under: Fallen Warriors, Writing Tagged With: Double Your Salary, Fallen Warriors, Fallen World, plotting, scrivener, Season two, writing

Fostering a growth mindset

June 7, 2019 by Mark Anderson Smith Leave a Comment

Photobox with words: Growth Mindset

I joined The Alliance of Independent Authors last month. I’ve been considering doing so for a while and finally took the plunge once I felt I was almost ready to print my next book.

Alli has been a fantastic resource for me already with plenty of useful and helpful articles freely available on their selfpublishingadvice.org website.

This article popped up on my Facebook feed today: The Psychology of Success For Authors: Do You Secretly Think Self-Publishing is Second Best? by Orna Ross.

While touching on the question of whether traditional publishing or self-publishing is the best route for authors, the article highlights the importance of having a growth mindset and willingness to learn which I feel are essential in any career.

“A growth mindset is the belief that with sincere creative intention, and enough creative attention, we can develop the abilities, skills, and resources we need to attain our goals.”

All of us are capable of developing a growth mindset. Even if we already have one, we can still learn more, still expand our skills. This is part of the reason I’m publishing my next book: Double Your Salary, to motivate you to believe you can achieve more.

What do you think of Orna’s article?

Filed Under: Double Your Salary, Goals, Writing Tagged With: Alli, Alliance of Independent Authors, goals, growth, mindset, motivation, Orna Ross, self-publishing

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Recent Posts

  • Q2 Halfway point
  • The 12 Week Year – a first quarter review
  • Double Your Salary …Without losing your soul!
  • 40K
  • Progress

Recent Blog Posts

  • Q2 Halfway point

    Q2 Halfway point

    May 12, 2021
    Back in December 2020/January 2021 I wondered if the contracting and job markets in the UK would continue to be dead through till the summer. It seemed possible that I might have to go six months without working and so to put a plan in place to make constructive use of the time seemed sensible. […]Read More »
  • The 12 Week Year – a first quarter review

    The 12 Week Year – a first quarter review

    April 21, 2021
    I recently finished my first 12 Week Year and wanted to review how it went to see if I could learn some lessons from the experience. If you’ve not read it, The 12 Week Year by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington proposes by working to a 12 week plan, you can get more done […]Read More »
  • Double Your Salary …Without losing your soul!

    Double Your Salary …Without losing your soul!

    June 25, 2019
    I’m excited to share that the hardback of my next book: Double Your Salary …Without losing your soul! will be released for sale on 1st August 2019. I believe that doubling your salary is possible when you understand who you are and what you are capable of. Sharing my story of how I doubled my […]Read More »
  • 40K

    40K

    June 15, 2019
    It might be that weekly posts are all I can manage until the first draft of Fallen Warriors Season Two is complete. I met my target of 10,000 words today and did manage to hit 2,000 words each day this week. That feels good. An accomplishment. I haven’t managed much else, publishing wise. I kept […]Read More »
  • Progress

    Progress

    June 8, 2019
    I wrote last week that I was setting a new target to write 5,000 words a day. Why do I do this to myself? The results are in. I think I managed a thousand words one day that first half week, then I’ve managed 4,790 this week. That’s not even a fifth of what I’d […]Read More »

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My 100 Goals Blog

  • The 12 Week Year – a first quarter review

    The 12 Week Year – a first quarter review

    April 21, 2021
  • Double Your Salary …Without losing your soul!

    Double Your Salary …Without losing your soul!

    June 25, 2019
  • 40K

    40K

    June 15, 2019
  • Progress

    Progress

    June 8, 2019
  • Fostering a growth mindset

    Fostering a growth mindset

    June 7, 2019

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