Keep going

I mentioned the last two days that whatever happened I needed to continue this habit of writing daily after my deadlines. Well it did and did not happen. I missed my scheduled time to write, but I am also reconsidering the time of day to write. This time of year I don't like to work outside after noon just due to light issues. So I waited until the end of the day. I also had no specific project to work on, so I didn't crank out words on that. Today was not supposed to be a word production day. Instead today I am reflecting and assessing.

One of the suggestions from the book I have been following is that every so often goals should be revisited and revised. A monthly schedule tends to work well. So here I am, a month later, looking to set new goals. Last month's goals were:

- A new draft of my collaboratives and fire mitigation grant and dissertation proposal, this time focusing on collective learning

- A paper on the failure of the voluntary sector and collaborative partnerships between nonprofits and the government sector

- Three answers to past comprehensive exam questions from my major area, Public Policy

- Not word-count specific, but I also intend to get my Water Mangers Use of Weather Data paper submitted at the AZ Law School Environmental Journal

The first two were accomplished. The last two I did not even get started on. They will carry over though. I have one more goal, but it is related to teaching next semester so should not be included in this time.

One thing I noted in my writing is that I was still writing the bulk of the papers in the last days. Yes I was producing anywhere from 500-1500 words on other days, but they were not directly producing the finished product. I want to try and start accomplishing more of the work ahead of time. Now that I have at least  two months until the next deadline I hope that new patterns will take hold, and I can accomplish some of this writing outside of deadlines.

One way of accomplishing this is to break up the big goals into subgoals. That way I have "finished" product that can be completed in shorter periods over time that aggregate into the finished product. With enough time this can work, so I am beginning with these two goals.

The first goal is being expanded to completing all pre-writing for my comprehensive exams. This is not a "do in a month" goal but a general goal with a deadline of early February. This is broken into four subgoals, which consist of the prewriting for each subject area I need to cover in my exams.

10-20 pages of prewriting each for the following:
- Public Policy
- Public Management
- Bureaucracy
- Methods

Then there is the goal of getting that paper published. This is low on the list, but needs to happen:
- Write CV
- Submit CV and Paper

I have some grading to complete next week, but overall I really want to stay on top of this, and will continue tracking here.