January-April 2020: week 1

And we're off! New year, new TLQ session, new achievements for all (we hope).

This session of TLQ will run until 18-19 April, fourteen weeks in total. This week will be introductions and goal-setting, both session goals and first-week goals; on 17 or 18 April, one of your hosts (Dame Eleanor Hull and Humming42) will put up a post inviting you to report on how you did with session goals. We'll try to remember to have a mid-session goal-review post around the end of February.

I'm just going to borrow language from last year about this time; by happy coincidence, it's Humming42 who wrote these words, or drew upon older posts for them:

The text below owes a debt to those who have been good enough to host here previously...

The format will be the same as ever. Here’s a quick recap: we will set goals for the whole session and then for each week. It's really easy to get carried away setting goals so I encourage you all to be optimistically realistic without creating a new source of pressure to perform! Goals can be in any aspect of life although the key focus is often writing tasks that are personally (and professionally) important but that never quite tip over into important AND urgent. Each week there will be a discussion topic, generally prompted by checkins the previous week. Feel free to suggest topics to throw open to the group. We'll recap the session goals for updating and refining about halfway through. Feel free to comment on everyone's goals as much or as little as you like.

So for this week:

1. Tell us a bit about yourself. What's your main focus at the moment? And where are you based? You are welcome to be vague and mysterious in the interest of maintaining anonymity while still introducing yourself to the group.

2. Goals for the session. Common themes include research, home stuff, family, self-care, crafts, exercise, writing, and gardening. Be as detailed or brief as is helpful to you. Many of us give specific projects nicknames that help us keep track of things. If you anticipate any challenges for the weeks ahead, you can note them too.

3. Goals for the coming week. What do you want to get done in the next week? Specific small tasks and “microdeadlines” are typically more achievable than 'tackle big task'. And don't forget, a lot of this is about the satisfaction of ticking things off the to-do list. So you can be as detailed as you want to in breaking goals down.

Newbies are welcome to join. And finally, don't worry if you miss a few checkins. Life happens.

 

I'm also hoping that we'll recycle the story-telling idea from last year: though at first I was a bit resistant, I wound up finding it really useful and enjoyable. So maybe consider, now, what your story and genre might be, and we could pick that up as a theme for next week. I think introductions and initial goals are probably enough for right now.

So please join us! Happy New Year and best wishes for a good first quarter-plus of it!