Put Your Goals Where You Can See Them

If you want to produce speckled yet strong sheep, cull through them first, then set black and white reeds before their watering (and mating) trough. See Gen. 30:25–43. This "in your face" technique works for people and their goals, too. See Deut. 27:8, but I especially like Habakkuk 2:2 where (paraphrased) it states to write the vision/goal plainly so that anyone can understand.

For a personal example, I love using Yahoo! Calendar for daily reminders, some more affirmations than To Do list entries. But one recent item (within the last two to three weeks) related to spring cleaning three rooms of my home. Guess what? I've done 1.5 of them. Not bad for someone who had no intention whatsoever to get to these rooms until next year at best. Hence the use of the calendar, so I don't have to remember this particular whimsy twelve months later on my own.

And let me repeat that these reminders are daily. So I tend to skim over them following that initial appearance. Even so, it is working. It is not only reaching my conscious and my subconscious, but actually prodding me to get up and do something singularly related to this designated chore. Wow.

So I'm trying another visual aid. I have two exercise DVDs on my desktop to remind me to exercise, which hasn't been working one iota, long since before the new year started. But I admit, they were hidden under bookmarks, a handheld calculator and my cell phone.

But not anymore. Now you can clearly see each like the turned-out books in a Barnes & Noble store.

This time, I'm counting the days to see when the effect from the cause first arrives.

I'll let you know.

Denise Barker, author + blogger + copy editor

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Backup Your Backups

The automatic backup on my system failed months ago and I've only backed up a couple times since then.  Now I'm trying to relearn the daily manual procedure.

Also, it wouldn't hurt to actually open your recovery file to see what is there.  Although it may contain a zip file or something of the sort, at least make sure it's not empty.  Better to know about a problem now than when really needed.

Years ago, when I worked for attorneys, we had five backup disks.  One for each weekday.  I'd stick the appropriate one in the server for the day's automatically scheduled backup and the one I just ejected would go directly to my purse to be taken home with me--in case of fire or flood.  So, at worst, we would lose only one day's work.

Converting that to an at-home author's creations, you need to backup all seven days if you are like me and work regardless.  Now my Yahoo! Calendar has a reminder to send to me everyday.  For that "off-site" storage, get a thumb drive with a hole in it and add that to your key chain.  Not sure if you can password protect the whole drive or if you have to go the individual-document route, but think about that, too, in case you ever lose your keys.  In the meantime, I'll add that subject to research on my To Do list.

If I had the money and resources, I'd print out every WIP which I have resident on my computer.  Remember the Y2K scare?  Just for those type eventualities. 

But at this point, I cannot use the toner and paper for my own novels, just for my freelance gigs.  Once I had a hard copy of each, they would be added to the photo albums and other pertinent documents I'd want to save in case of an emergency.  People and pets would be the first priority, then this stash would be the second.

After the horrible hail storm in Dallas on Flag Day and praying for those people involved, the event just kept  nagging my brain, eventually morphing into a big nudge regarding my own personal plan to implement.

So, here it is.  Hope this spurs another author to save those written ideas.  There is no way I could recreate the 350,000 or so words I've typed to date.  It would be crushing to face that loss of time, effort, creativity.

Therefore, prepare, folks.  Backup that work.

Denise Barker, author + freelance copy editor + blogger

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