Consider your writing process, how do you write? What helps? What needs work? Why? by Kyle Phoenix

 

My process, seemingly prodigious for about 20–30 years is actually not where or what I would want it to be. yes, I’ve written dozens, close to 100 books. Published most of them with another 100 in process. Then there are the thousands of blogs and articles I’ve published online and around the world. And then short stories that have been published all over too.

Seems like a lot, I know.

To you.

But to me it’s like my current plan around a budget and moving and packing and boxes and storage and furniture I’ve seen at a store I want to buy—-an Asian cabinet—-it’s all sort of up in the air—-hypothesis, not real, entirely.

• Bourgeois is a long short story that I actually have published several times, most recently in the short story collection—Escapades. The idea from there was a senator’s wife, a Black woman has an affair and gets cast out from her privileged circle.
• Clan Chief is about matrilineal passing of Chiefdom in a Native tribe to a daughter and attempts on her life revolving around Indian casino money.
• The Veil about someone who is somewhat more than LGBTSGL in a strict Muslim land. This oe came from an idea after completing Tranny, where I thought there was more in one of the side characters.
• Where The Walker and the Path Meet—-this was a full out dream of following a young through his journey from a Latin land to migrating to America and human trafficking. I did a little bit of research so far where I’ve watched some documentaries about human trafficking so I know what I want to incorporate, what works.
• FiFi-I had a dream about a couple of characters, a story, a name—-FiFi. I know what the book is essentially about/like. Even recently I found this picture online that would make a perfect book cover with some creative touches. I know FiFi. And now I have to write it.
• The same for Court of Conscience, a 12 book legal series—-where I have about 3–5 of the books already completely written. They just need to be edited, cleaned up a bit, better layout—-boom—-published. The first three novels are basically finished—-80% Black & White Justice, Betrayal and Consequences. I want each trilogy to sort of focus on one of three core characters and a deeper social issue such as race, sexuality, family, justice. I started it in high school 20 years ago so I know the characters well I just need to move it along to the imagined conclusion.
• Race War: Hated, Hunted, Haunted, a trilogy I pretty much know. About 1/5 typed up so far.
• Because Mbube Mbube, my first definite horror book, has a kernel at the end that leads into Race War, I’ve rushed it through and it’s about 1/4 done.
• Free is pretty much 90% done, just need to wrap it up, clean it up, edit it, send it off, decide between 2 or 3 good covers and publish.
• Sanction I have about 1/3 of it handwritten so I just need to finish that, type it up, then finish it up. Excitingly it’s the first book I had to do a map of a town and figure out volume of water to flooding the town when levees break. That research was kind of exciting.
• Myriad: The Orisha Wars, is 12 books in a series and I have 1–3 books plotted out. And ideas for other books.
• Escapades. Volume 3 and then an Escapade Omnibus of all of the short stories from 1,2,3—-1 & 2 already published. Plus I have about 50 pages of notes on the design of stories which I wanted to use to talk about, example writing, dissect my writing.

That's 30–32 books of fiction on my 1/3 to 80% done “table”.

• 4 teaching textbooks that I’ve been working on, a tetralogy——I love saying that—-for years now. Very good and finally the publishing idiosyncratic issues have worked out. All four on teaching/education, able to be done in hardcover and paperback at a decent price.
• A revision and updating of the very well selling 2023, 4th edition of Good Men for Men, including High Value Men/criteria, etc..
• He Is Not You, a relationship communication book from workshops. 2023–2024
• Bundles-Love, Passion, Money, Fetishes and Life Stages—-5 separate books combining several smaller books with updates.
• A collection of books of essays/blogs—-maybe a 12 or 24 book series—-easy to combine but then it has to be edited.

That’s 11–35 non fiction books

• Ashe, a semi-memoir, critical thinking book teaching about achieving forms of liberation and power.
• Phoenix, a book on spirituality and energy that I’ve long thought about writing and just printing and giving away for free.

That’s 2 “creative” books.

About 70–75 books on deck for the next few years, our business review coming up in 2025.

How I Write

I write to a loose to tight schedule. I’ve now got project binders and calendars, on a monthly production/editing schedule.

Most of my stuff is sort of written in the sense that I have 50 to 100 pages of at least half of the above projects done in direct text or research. Generally, my challenge is isolating a schedule of production in relationship to managing other projects.

Because I write so much a lot of what I’m looking at is whether an idea is complete enough to finish or does it need to incubate a little longer? Sometimes I have a plot point like I do in FiFi where I’m like okay, I have it up until such and such point but then what? Let it germinate for awhile……

Mbube Mbube I literally have the whole novel from a dream but the work has been sussing out characters to fit the idea itself.

Race War I’ve thought about for about 20 years, since high school. Then the title for each book maybe 15 years ago then the actual plot came on a conference/retreat to Guerneville and the racial upset I saw occur there—-10 years ago. Then a year or so ago I designed the three books—-basic covers and outlines to see what they would look like and then started outlining the format—-I want to do 3 narrative styles as I started thinking out the plot and how each book leads into the next.

Free was from yet another dream of a father declaring to a town that he was going to kill his son. But then I thought about how so many men in my workshops have discussed their Black fathers trying to kill them. Then I remembered that my father tried to kill me——then I had the line of the plot but I had to work or, suss out why or what the son did to drive his father to this end. I have some of it but I want to pour all of this into a French storyline/mold.

Initial Ideas

My initial ideas about two thirds through are like completely straightened hair and then there’s a furious buzz of tools and product and a hairstyle is born. To answer there’s the basic structure—-like a skyscraper girders—-I know how to build a story, a building. Then another part of me comes along, the creative architect and starts slashing and molding and crushing and stretching so that the building itself, completed, as a book, is wholly different that the base structural edifices it began as.

It’s like I walk away from the structure and come back to it with a deeper sense of interest, having seen new things, read new things imagined new things and I kick it into being different, broader, bigger, better—-each walkabout making the work I return to, better for my new ideas.

Then per my mentor and friend Raymond Federman——12+ Drafts everything is cycled through, cycled, cycled, cycled, cycled so that by the time I get a finished product in hand—-the edits are cosmetic because it’s different than it began. One day perhaps I’ll try to completely write what it is from Draft 1 to 12 but I’ve yet to keep a backtrack as much as a forward version-evolution—-accurately——by that I mean files, etc.. Generally, what I file in storage/banker boxes is a completed cycle of drafts and then I’m really working from one version/Proof that incorporates all of the others to that point. Then when I finish whatever stage that Proof is—Say Draft #7—-I put it away as Draft #8 arrives—-and now I’m working on some notes or continuity and the cover and physical layout and some idea that wasn’t complete—-but now it is so Draft # 9 arrives in the mail so Draft # 8 is a distraction and gets put away and so on and so forth.

What Works and What I Need

What i aim for is that every project, novel, story has a gem, a crux, a point, a creative point to make it unique——make it “work” as it’s own entity. Sometimes I’ll forestall finishing a book because the project hasn’t told me that special point. As a writing style throughout projects I’ve discovered that the unique point is completed and also complicated—-a book isn’t working, I’m not growing as a writer unless there’s a level of I don’t know immediately how to streamline it. There must be that Rubicon and that’s when I know its good, completed, ready to publish.

Sometimes there has to be a point where it makes me cry, or sad, or upset, or mad——each one of my books there’s a point that chills me, makes me cry and it’s never the points that folk would think it is.

I need that to know I’m writing something of potentiality, quality, value. That I am exercising my Talent, the Phoenix. My relationship to my work is that I must be able to stand back and not simply like it but see symmetry and down the line, weeks, months, sometimes pick it up in a year and not completely recognize passages but it’s GOOD.

Which I guess is why I have so many projects juggling at once so I can back off before I ruin something or before I greenlight something that’s not ready, that’s not my standard of good. And my standard is very high. By standard I mean it must be markedly different than the last project. If I did 1st person, gotta rock 3rd person. if the last one was female focused, gotta man focus it or trans focus it or lesbian focus it or intersex focus it. There must also be a challenge on the level of what is it like being LGBTSGL in a country where that don’t fly. Or what is it like crossing the border of Central America/Mexico to America, being trafficked. it’s got to sear.

In college I used to refer to it as slitting open a vein in my projects that I presented to classes, that was to be published. I didn’t know the Hemmingway quote about how does one write?—-”sit down and open a vein” but I concur.

I was thinking how to illustrate that GOOD moment, when I know I’ve got something and I thought of a music video because the song was playing as I walked to the store.

So the below Madonna Bad Girl video—-she’s a businesswoman who’s self destructive. She dies at the end. But what I mean by a GOOD moment are two distinctly in th video

• One when she turns to the guy she’s brought home—-when she sees him and she knows he’s going to kill her. That look of understanding and resignation. THAT’s a GOOD moment.
• The second is when the cat hisses. That’s another GOOD moment.

In my writing, I try to capture that somewhere, not always the denouement or beats—-those are time markers, what instead I’m looking for is a snapping when the writing becomes almost self aware, when it stops being about just telling a story and instead becomes the story—-when the reader sees something or reads it that unveils a whole series of realities or events or understandings—-a GOOD God moment, if you will.

It’s ephemeral but of dense matter, perhaps like a momentary black hole appearing—-shakes the reality of the work——and then vanishes. But each time the page before it doesn’t signal and POP—-black hole opens, you recognize it——and then it closes.

That’s what I need and want to always achieve, aim for and even look for in a book I’m reading and some ways that I discern good, better, amazing writers/writing. Bad writers are concerned with worldbuilding, characters, dialogue but not cracking the bat on that good moment, watching it sail into the bleachers.

Sometimes I think, reading or teaching——”Oh, they don’t even know they're holding a bat and (good) baseballs are just swishing by them that they should be cracking into the stands to make this piece good.”

#KylePhoenix

#TheKylePhoenixShow

My Art and Writing, Part 4, From Idea to Book by Kyle Phoenix

“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”― Toni Morrison

My students, emails from readers and professional colleagues are always pressing me about my output.  They ask that I discuss it, to write it down, to share it as if I'm doing something incredible for so much output.  I'll tell you honestly that I'm not outputting as much as I believe I should.  Within My Art (I'm now struggling with how to conceptualize an d contextualize so many areas)which so far includes writing, TV, film, business, teaching and soon music production, I'm always dancing between them all.

Right now my computer is slowly saving a high definition version of a TV show for February on Development: Business and Budgeting; I just finished reading a case study in Strategic Entrepreneurial Growth while traveling for about an hour combined on the bus to classes; I just re-read a few chapters on How To Write More; sitting on the screen in front of me is the rough draft of a book to be typed up; and here I am trying to maintain at least a majority presence in my stream of consciousness blog (I gave up months ago on trying to write a blog entry every day and my Facebook and Twitter feeds happening mainly because there are so any overlapping informational pieces that are emailed or streamed to me.)

Ok, ok, let me organize this better: I break things down into stages and outcomes.

Stage 1: Work With The End in Mind 
(yes, from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People)
Right now I, and the small but helpful team I work with, are mid to end finalizing about 60 more books of mine to come out in the next few months, that range from 150 pages to 600+ pages and cover sexuality, relationships, fiction, non-fiction textbooks, erotica and even fan fiction/superheroes (I'm just publishing that last one as a personal table book, fun-thing, though I do have a couple of fantasy titles that I'll be doing as graphic novels in the future.)

Some of us are writers, editors, entrepreneurs,, lawyers, printers...

Generally each project has a business and creative/content outline.  A book idea is generated by me and then presented back to the printer, editors, legal and I consider whether it's one worthy of minimally 150 pages and all of the sundry costs involved in that (time, money, attention) then I generally do a mock cover work up.  I find that having a basic cover for a manuscript helps me to visualize it as complete and I've even started making a screensaver out of the whole folder of book covers to keep me motivated.

Stage 2: Assemble the Ingredients, Sometimes With a Stripper or Two
I've mentioned before my love of notebooks and my equal love of writing longhand first.  This blog is an experiment in breaking that form, in being less editorial and less of a perfectionist with my writing; just letting my thoughts flow.  Though in order to jump start the blog this past year I started a full notebook for it and hand wrote about 50 blogs---half of which I've typed up and published here. There's a blog on the TV show Scandal that is pretty good that I'll probably publish soon and a few other book and movie reviews that are fun and short.


For books I have a notebook, I'm writing up a draft of each chapter after I work out an outline.  I generally operate in a maximum of 12 chapters for non-fiction work so depending on the complexity I buy a 70 to 120 page notebook (I love shopping for notebooks and larger books for journaling!), I tend to get multiple notebooks at a time and design covers for them, say up to 5 notebooks to comprise a full book.  I then segment them with Post It notes---Section 1 and then Chapters 1, 2, 3, etc. and the first section is generally a rundown of what each chapter should contain (this part I generally also type up and revise as I need a master template) then I get to writing.

Though I carry a laptop lots of times, I choose to hand write because I can do it anywhere---on the train, the bus, sitting and waiting for an appointment, at lunch.  A co-worker recently mentioned to me that she always sees me in the lounge writing, reading with my headphones on---I'm not being anti-social---that's generally an intensive writing time/deadline for me.

I generally sit back by the green lights.  Like a Boss.....lol

I have sat and written in a bar here in Manhattan, No Parking generally on their lounge-y nights when there's about 20 people there.  I can get two or three drinks depending on the special for about $20 bucks, people watch, see a dancer or two, occasionally run into a friend, be sort of social and not isolated at a desk writing.  I've written so far 3 books there---1 fiction, 2 non-fiction---totaling about 700 pages.  I then spent a few months upon review of the fiction manuscript purposefully writing an additional 100 pages on a character to beef him up---the great part was he was sort of a club kid so it was great ambiance for the writing itself.

That's not my arm.

Yes, there are strippers.
Yes, I tip.
Yes, they tend to politely step gingerly over or past me.

I know it's odd but there's something about the dichotomy of music/sound, activity, writing and just a splash of a libation focused for about an hour or two that gets the whole of some work out.
I would defend though that plenty of writers like Hemingway, Parker, Bukowski, Beckett wrote in odd places, in public places and bars.

A friend told me that a guy he knows relayed to him that the guy came over to ask what I was doing and I answered honestly--"writing a book" probably and then he continued chatting me up but then got intimidated because I used a word he didn't understand.  Hilarious.  But he then went on to email me later that he'd bought one of my books and enjoyed it immensely.  Education at work!  Whooohooo!

My only regret about the place is that they don't have you know wings or mini tacos, tapas!  I'd be writing there 5 days a week!

Stage 3: Nimble Fingers
Typing.  I don't hate it because it's an additional step I've created in my writing process that if I just typed everything directly would be eliminated.  But this is my method for about 70% of my writing.  I have a few clever desk stands that hold up notebooks and pages so I prop them up and type away.  I can generally get a chapter typed up in about an hour.  In the typing I make my first small adjustments, sometimes my stream of consciousness writing is rougher than intended or other times because of the limits of paper I leave myself broad notes and directions for sections.  The irony of this process is that I write far more than I can catch up to in typing.  Right now I have probably about 300 to 500 pages of handwritten stuff to type up and maybe in my scheduling another 500 pages to hand write.

I don't dislike typing, I used to type up my manuscripts as a teenager---200-300 page opuses so by 18 I was typing about 50 words a minute.  If I push it and focus I can generally get up to 70 to 80 words a minute...I can even almost maintain this speed not looking.  This might seem impressive until I tell you that my mother does about 100 to 120 words a minute---when we used to Instant Message each other she would type tracts at a time and it would just unfold almost faster than I could read in the IM box.

Several times I've hired typists to type up longer manuscripts---there were some that I had hard copies of but couldn't for some or another reason transfer the original digital copy.  (I'm of multiple minds about saving things in some "Cloud" online but the other option which I currently do are this incessant number of back up copies on multiple hard drives and after awhile that just gets looney.)  Typists though are sort of expensive.  I was going to farm out a job a few months ago just to get 5 notebooks typed up so that it could go on to editing stage and it was creeping up in price to about $1000.  That wasn't such a horrible price, just confirmed to me that I need to do a better turnover of writing to typing.

Stage 4: Editing Alone and As A Group Activity
I enjoy the editing process that I do by myself, with the professional editors then with my mentors' advice in place.

Draft 1 & 2 is generally written draft then a typed draft.

I begin, young, fit, happy....

Draft 3 is the long process of organizing it into a book format generally speaking in a template.  Is there enough content?  Do I need a glossary?  Do I need footnotes?  This is where I tend to add some fat to the whole project.

Drafts 4 & 5 are about book format-font, justifying, punctuation, grammar, spelling, etc. as by the fourth or fifth edit I'm generally pretty tight on the content.

Drafts 6th and 7th edit generally involve the editor where I send it off to them and they get back to me with questions, points and feedback about both the content and the layout.  The layout is generally a "rough draft"---the Table of Contents again acting as the master template to the book.

Draft 8 about 90% firm as to what it will look like chapter by chapter but generally what happens is one chapter needs to be cut, beefed up on switched.

Draft 9 is TOC 95% , Readability Factor about 75%---does it flow well?  DO I like it?  Will others like it?

Draft 10 is generally a re-do where myself and the editor generally hack through it.  This part is unnecessary, this part repetitive, this part could be beefed up.  Ironically this is where paring happens from the beefing up in Draft 3.  (When I wrote those additional 100 pages (30 typed) for the fiction book in No Parking?  This is the version I was amending.)  Fiction and non-fiction vary somewhat I've found---I print out and carry around a bound galley/typed draft of fiction and do direct to page edits.  This is a really beat up copy by the end and sometimes there are multiple Draft 10's as I work out what works well and what doesn't.

Draft 11 is generally the formal proof where the printer sends out what it will look like as a book and he description and finalizing of the business stuff happens.  Who gets paid, how, how much, is the book over or under budget (generally determined by page number, word count, number of colors on the cover, coloring inside of the book, the really tight legal questioning of the content (Ironically the legal proofreaders are so good that I've had several books flagged because some of my work was somewhere else like a magazine, journal, etc. and it came up as in my book so I literally had to prove it was me to my own company to create a release for it to be used in a new production.  Got to love their due diligence though!)

Draft 12 is generally the final version but there's still a window open to catching minor revisions and changes.  Sometimes this means we got the permission for a pic we really wanted to use for the cover but didn't think would happen so Draft 12 becomes Draft 12a, Draft 12b, Draft 12c---yes, I literally have versions of my own books---generally one of each that has about fifty to a hundred Post it Notes throughout with things I like, dislike, changed, minor mistakes caught.  I've since learned it's never "perfect" but because you got it right in 2000 other ways, you let three errors survive rather than holding up printing to sell.

"The writing part is almost over!"

Twelve Drafts comes from one of my mentors Raymond Federman who taught me for years that a work wasn't "done" or ready for absolute submission until that 12th draft.  It might sound crazy and excessive but in the forthcoming novel Hush as an example---it started out as a novella/long short story of about 75 pages in high school.  By undergraduate I'd gotten it up to 150 pages and started working with Federman with it and he and another professor who was considering it for publication, Professor Ronald Sukenick of the University at Colorado Boulder gave me the feedback that the short stories it was bundled with were publishable and they would publish a few.  The short stories eventually became the first volume in a fiction collection, Escapades, Vol. 1.  But Sukenick explained that Hush was a novella/long story in Escapades that deserved to be a novel.  After expanding it to about 350+ pages, the next editor gave me back extensive notes, with the glaring point that I had to invest a bit more in one character, that it needed a fuller lead protagonist.  Hence the 100 pages I then hand wrote and typed in.

SMOOOOOOCHES!

Non-fiction is faster and slower in some points because of whatever the topic at hand is.  The topic generally requires that you simply write every thought you have about something, reference it, point to the overall pattern and make some points and suggestions about what is interesting or what I've learned or what the reader can take away.  In some ways I find it more fluidic because 75% of my fiction work I have an ending in mind from the beginning or midway.

The rest of the work is more business-publishing related, that's another article.  I hope this one covers/answers the questions I got on writing, tips, suggestions for how to write and my process so far.


Be sure to email me about what you think and tell me your writing process!

Thank you for reading and if you liked this check out the other blogs or one my books on Amazon.com
Kyle Phoenix
Email: kylephoenixshow@gmail.com
Website: http://site.kylephoenix.com/
Blog: http://kylephoenixshow.blogspot.com/
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Forget Setting Goals. Focus on This Instead by James Clear

We all have things that we want to achieve in our lives -- getting into the better shape, building a successful business, raising a wonderful family, writing a best-selling book, winning a championship, and so on.

And for most of us, the path to those things starts by setting a specific and actionable goal. At least, this is how I approached my life until recently. I would set goals for classes I took, for weights that I wanted to lift in the gym, and for clients I wanted in my business.

What I’m starting to realize, however, is that when it comes to actually getting things done and making progress in the areas that are important to you, there is a much better way to do things.

It all comes down to the difference between goals and systems.

Let me explain.

The Difference Between Goals and Systems

What’s the difference between goals and systems?

• If you’re a coach, your goal is to win a championship. Your system is what your team does at practice each day.
• If you’re a writer, your goal is to write a book. Your system is the writing schedule that you follow each week.
• If you’re a runner, your goal is to run a marathon. Your system is your training schedule for the month.
• If you’re an entrepreneur, your goal is to build a million dollar business. Your system is your sales and marketing process.

Now for the really interesting question:

If you completely ignored your goals and focused only on your system, would you still get results?

For example, if you were a basketball coach and you ignored your goal to win a championship and focused only on what your team does at practice each day, would you still get results?

I think you would.

As an example, I just added up the total word count for the articles I’ve written this year. (You can see them all here.) In the last 12 months, I’ve written over 115,000 words. The typical book is about 50,000 to 60,000 words, so I have basically written two books this year.

All of this is such a surprise because I never set a goal for my writing. I didn’t measure my progress in relation to some benchmark. I never set a word count goal for any particular article. I never said, “I want to write two books this year.”

What I did focus on was writing one article every Monday and Thursday. And after sticking to that schedule for 11 months, the result was 115,000 words. I focused on my system and the process of doing the work. In the end, I enjoyed the same (or perhaps better) results.

Let’s talk about three more reasons why you should focus on systems instead of goals.

1. Goals reduce your current happiness.

When you’re working toward a goal, you are essentially saying, “I’m not good enough yet, but I will be when I reach my goal.”

The problem with this mindset is that you’re teaching yourself to always put happiness and success off until the next milestone is achieved. “Once I reach my goal, then I’ll be happy. Once I achieve my goal, then I’ll be successful.”

SOLUTION: Commit to a process, not a goal.

Choosing a goal puts a huge burden on your shoulders. Can you imagine if I had made it my goal to write two books this year? Just writing that sentence stresses me out.

But we do this to ourselves all the time. We place unnecessary stress on ourselves to lose weight or to succeed in business or to write a best-selling novel. Instead, you can keep things simple and reduce stress by focusing on the daily process and sticking to your schedule, rather than worrying about the big, life-changing goals.

When you focus on the practice instead of the performance, you can enjoy the present moment and improve at the same time.

2. Goals are strangely at odds with long-term progress.

You might think your goal will keep you motivated over the long-term, but that’s not always true.

Consider someone training for a half-marathon. Many people will work hard for months, but as soon as they finish the race, they stop training. Their goal was to finish the half-marathon and now that they have completed it, that goal is no longer there to motivate them. When all of your hard work is focused on a particular goal, what is left to push you forward after you achieve it?

This can create a type of “yo-yo effect” where people go back and forth from working on a goal to not working on one. This type of cycle makes it difficult to build upon your progress for the long-term.

SOLUTION: Release the need for immediate results.

I was training at the gym last week and I was doing my second-to-last set of clean and jerks. When I hit that rep, I felt a small twinge in my leg. It wasn’t painful or an injury, just a sign of fatigue near the end of my workout. For a minute or two, I thought about doing my final set. Then, I reminded myself that I plan to do this for the rest of my life and decided to call it a day.

In a situation like the one above, a goal-based mentality will tell you to finish the workout and reach your goal. After all, if you set a goal and you don’t reach it, then you feel like a failure.

But with a systems-based mentality, I had no trouble moving on. Systems-based thinking is never about hitting a particular number, it’s about sticking to the process and not missing workouts.

Of course, I know that if I never miss a workout, then I will lift bigger weights in the long-run. And that’s why systems are more valuable than goals. Goals are about the short-term result. Systems are about the long-term process. In the end, process always wins.

3. Goals suggest that you can control things that you have no control over.

You can’t predict the future. (I know, shocking.)

But every time we set a goal, we try to do it. We try to plan out where we will be and when we will make it there. We try to predict how quickly we can make progress, even though we have no idea what circumstances or situations will arise along the way.

SOLUTION: Build feedback loops.

Each Friday, I spend 15 minutes filling out a small spreadsheet with the most critical metrics for my business. For example, in one column I calculate the conversion rate (the percentage of website visitors that join my free email newsletter each week). I rarely think about this number, but checking that column each week provides a feedback loop that tells me if I’m doing things right. When that number drops, I know that I need to send high quality traffic to my site.

Feedback loops are important for building good systems because they allow you to keep track of many different pieces without feeling the pressure to predict what is going to happen with everything. Forget about predicting the future and build a system that can signal when you need to make adjustments.

Fall In Love With Systems

None of this is to say that goals are useless. However, I’ve found that goals are good for planning your progress and systems are good for actually making progress.

In fact, I think I’m going to officially declare 2014 the “Year of the Sloth” so that everyone will be forced to slow down and make consistent, methodical progress rather than chasing sexy goals for a few weeks and then flaming out.

Goals can provide direction and even push you forward in the short-term, but eventually a well-designed system will always win. Having a system is what matters. Committing to the process is what makes the difference.

A version of this article was first published on JamesClear.com.

James Clear

Based in North Carolina, James Clear writes at JamesClear.com, where he uses behavior science to help you master your habits, improve your health, and do better work. He also publishes a free weekly newsletter on improving your mental and physical performance.

Read more: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/230333#ixzz2owh40ELg





Smile,
Kyle


kylephoenixshow@gmail.com
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