Once you have your list of long and short-term goals, it’s time to prioritize these goals. Your writing life should be a treasure throve of desires, dreams, and goals to be achieved. The burden to achieve every goal you want to can overwhelm you to the point where you get little or no concrete writing done. Therefore, prioritizing your writing goals is very important because it allows you to identify the most important goals so that you can give them more of your attention, energy, and time. It also allows you to spend time on the things that will advance the completion of your goals. Further, prioritization can also help you plan effectively. There is no better feeling for a working writer than achieving even one small part of a goal after a long hard day at work. Here are a few tips to prioritize your writing goals.

• Look over your goals. Divide them into three categories, urgent, important and not important. Give each category a numerical value from 1 to 3, with one being the most important and 3 being the least important and something that can wait.
• Assess the value of each. Identify your top priority goals and write them down. You may also want to color-code your list.
• Order tasks by estimated time and effort. It doesn’t have to be a perfect estimate of time but an approximation. So, if you don’t complete the goal in the specified time, don’t be hard on yourself. Just schedule more time and keep going.
• Be flexible and adaptable. Nothing is carved in stone for a working writer. Life happens. There will be times when you will have to go to the dentist when you planned to write, or you will have to visit loved ones in hospital. These unexpected obligations can cut into your writing time.
• Think of achieving one goal at a time. If you work on more than one goal at once, you will feel overwhelmed and your chances of completing the goal is reduced. This will only frustrate you further and erode your self-confidence.
• Know when to cut out goals. Some of your goals may be either redundant or simply unimportant. Keep regularly assessing your goals to weed out the unimportant ones.
• Focus on completing no more than three goals in a year. Once you complete the first goal, go to the next goal on your list and complete it. Hopefully by the end of the year you will complete all three goals.
• If you complete all three goals, and there is still time in the year to complete one more goal, set another small goal to complete. But don’t forget to give yourself a pat on the back for a job well done. This is essential to keep working hard to complete your goals.

By taking these steps, you will be a successful working writer. The more organized you are, the better and more successful you will be. Prioritizing your goals will help you categorize your goals according to their level of importance. This can further help you become more aware of your writing goals and which ones you have completed. The clearer and more aware you are, the more successful you will be.