Patty at Elm Street Quilts has this wonderful project called “One Monthly Goal”. If you click the link to her site you can read all about it. The basic premise is to set one (1, not 3 or 5 ) goal for the month. I like to set goals, and I am good at working toward both short- and long-term goals. But the idea of ONE goal was a revelation to me. I usually have multiple projects in various stages (right now I am working on 5) and the idea of making one goal seemed impossible. But I decided to try it.
I knew September would be busy with launching a business and a website, finishing one 100-day quilt, starting a new 100-day quilt as a quilt-a-long, making a new version of the Tree of Life quilt, and prepping my first quilt pattern for release (whew, I am getting tired just writing that). I wanted to make sure that other projects did not get neglected. So I turned to a quilt that is a very overdue wedding gift that always seem to be on the back burner. I had started the diamonds for my broken lone star quilt, but only had about 8 done of the 32 that were needed. My one monthly goal (or OMG) was to complete all 32 diamonds. I scheduled it on my calendar – and then moved it when other priorities came up – and then moved it again when something unplanned happened. And got to Monday, September 28th and I still had 12 diamonds to go. Because I had set the goal (and declared it publicly), I spent Monday and Tuesday evenings finishing up the last of the diamonds!
OMG worked for me – all of my big goals were achieved. And setting the OMG pushed me to make progress on another important project that was not quite so urgent.
Bottom line – Don’t let the urgent goal keep you from achieving the important one.
Better Done Quilts 