I’ve been hearing a lot about micro-goals lately, whether in relation to dieting or any other kind of task. Without really thinking about it, it’s something I’ve been doing for a lot of my life. While thinking about the big picture, like becoming a published author, I was setting smaller more achievable goals along the way. Write a chapter and the chapters became a book. Finish the book and look for an agent. Start the next book. Small steps leading to a big change. I took the same approach with my diet. Do ten minutes on the elliptical. Walk 10,000 steps. Lose 1 pound. Each small step leading to a bigger change.

Why is that so important? Setting goals that are unrealistic only sets you up to feel like a failure. No one is going to lose 100 pounds in a month or even a few months. It takes time. The same with writing. No one is going to become a bestseller overnight. It takes time and dedication.

But if you approach that goal with small steps, it not only seems more attainable, it is more attainable. When I do workshops and people say that they can’t imagine writing a book, I ask them “Do you think you could write a page a day?” The answer is invariably yes which prompts me to say, “Well if you did that, you’d have a book in a year, right?”

I’d like to think that my helping them think about doing such a big thing in small steps might help them reach that bigger goal, namely, writing a book.