There’s nothing worse than having fuzzy goals. Fuzzy goals are goals that you set but that you’re not sure you can fulfill. These may also be goals that you don’t have a clear sense of, even while you were setting them. Fuzzy goals won’t help you to be successful. My goals last year were all fuzzy. I had no clear idea where I was going or where I was at any point in time. I kind of floundered about, going from task to task in an unorganized manner. I had no overall purpose for my writing goals, and I certainly didn’t set any definite deadlines to complete projects. And that really hurt me in the end. The worse thing that you could do as a writer is to be efficient and not merely effective. In order to be successful, you have to be both efficient and effective. I was efficient all right. I got a lot of writing done. But when I look back at my overall output, I wasn’t successful. I didn’t send out more than a third of what I wrote, and I didn’t follow through on comments that I received from editors. When you’re efficient but not effective, you have fuzzy goals. Go back to the drawing board and revise your goals and make sure that 2011 is the best and most productive year ever for you in your writing career. ~ Irene