What is your most important goal right now?
Is it to land a client? Set up your LinkedIn profile? Create a product? Start a blog?
Or, something else entirely?
My next question for you is, how is that goal coming along?
If you’re like so many writers I talk to these days, you’re busy in unexpected ways.
Your kids may not be in school, which means you have more distractions happening during the day.
Your work may be busier than ever. Or, you may be dedicating more time to landing new writing projects.
And, with so much uncertainty in the world right now, you may also find that your ability to focus has lost a little of its edge.
All of this can create the feeling you’re spinning your wheels instead of making real progress toward the goal that matters most to you.
When I’m in that situation, my first tendency is to be hard on myself. But, I’ve learned over the years that I do much better when I introduce more fun into my goal work.
One way I bring in more fun is to use monthly themes.
What Is a Monthly Theme, Exactly?
In the broadest sense a theme is simply an idea that recurs again and again. Or, it can be the setting for a particular event or activity.
You can take either approach to using themes to support your goal.
For a broad idea, you might choose gratitude as your theme. You could also make connections your theme. Or, new things.
For a setting, you could make local coffee shops a theme for the month. Or parks. Or libraries. You could do “tea time” or “margaritas at midnight.”
There is no right or wrong way to choose a theme. You just want to choose something that resonates with you and lifts you up. The ideal theme will shift your mindset from the stressful, “I have to get this done, and why am I taking so long” line of thinking to more of a “I can’t wait to work on this some more, because I’m having fun” kind of a thought process.
Monthly Themes in Action
Hopefully, at this point, you’re thinking this sounds like it might be worth a try.
But, then you might also be wondering how you actually use a monthly theme to get more done.
Glad you asked. 🙂
This can take a little thought. But, when you find a really good match-up between your theme and your goal, you can turn your month into something memorable, special, and productive.
Let’s set an example goal. Imagine at the beginning of the year, you decided to launch a blog that you intend to grow into a side business. At this point, three quarters of the way through the year, you’ve chosen your topic… but, you haven’t done anything else.
Your next step is to write your first eight blog posts. You know that once you have those blog posts written, you’ll be excited to set up and launch your blog. So, you plan to write the posts before setting up the site.
But, you’ve been intending to write those posts for months. In the beginning you were excited to write them, but it’s been so long now, it feels like a chore.
A monthly theme is just the thing to restore your good feelings toward those posts.
You might try “wine and chocolates” as your theme for the month.
You could purchase a very nice box of chocolates – one you wouldn’t normally splurge on. And a very nice bottle of wine or two. In the evenings, you could sip the wine paired with the chocolate and then spend a half hour writing. By making your theme an indulgence you enjoy, you tie your blog writing to that feeling of indulgence. It may take a writing session or two, but I bet a few days into the month you’ll be looking forward to your evening writing sessions.
Another approach might be to make celebrations your theme. You could write down eight small celebrations… a mini-dance party with your kids, a long walk to view the autumn leaves, take-out from your favorite restaurant. And then, each time you finish a blog post, you draw one of your celebrations from a hat. The key here is to make sure you hold your blog post celebration within 24 hours of finishing. You want to tie that celebration to the good work you’ve done.
Building on Last Month’s Success
Using themes from month to month can also build your momentum.
In keeping with our blog post example, let’s say that first month you go with a “wine and chocolates” theme, and you finish your first eight blog posts. Yay!
Now your next step is to give your blog a home. To keep your momentum going, you decide to use a theme to get that step accomplished, as well. In this case, you choose “asking for help” as your theme… because you’re a little nervous about the tech stuff.
To fulfill this theme, you find a YouTube channel that offers videos on setting up a blog, and you join a couple of Facebook groups that also focus on setting up websites and blogs and that welcome beginners.
You decide you’ll ask your significant other for a high five every time you reach out and ask for help with getting your blog set up. Your goal is to get at least one high five by the end of each day.
By asking for help whenever you get stuck or need advice about your options, you streamline the process of launching your blog, you learn a lot, and you even make some connections along the way. Most importantly, by the end of the month, your blog is published and populated with those first eight posts.
And now, your momentum is really growing…
Could you have done this without the monthly themes? Sure. But, the themes frame the things you want to do in a new way… one that makes moving forward easy and fun. When that happens, your resistance will drop, and you’ll surprise yourself at how quickly you get things done.
Have you ever used a theme to support your goals? If so, tell us about it in the comments. And, if not, are you thinking about it now? Share your ideas with us below…
