Low Bar/High Bar Goal Setting for Writers

by Lynn H. Blackburn @LynnHBlackburn

Happy March! 

As you read these words, I’m fresh off a deadline, which means I’m simultaneously relieved and terrified, and I’m more than a little punchy. Which is why I’m leaning hard into the goals I set at the beginning of the year that included a low bar/high bar option. 

I mentioned this concept back in my January post. I heard about it from a Bullet Journal creator I follow on YouTube, JashiiCorren and while it wasn’t an entirely new concept to me, this was the first time it really resonated with me. 

I’ve always been someone who has had very high expectations for myself and for a long time, I was generally successful at meeting my goals. 

But then … well … life happened. I grew up. I had got married, had kids, and now I’m coming up hard on 50 and the number of balls I have to keep in the air would make even the most talented juggler cry for mercy! 

Part of me has accepted that I can’t do it all. That some balls will be dropped. And there are seasons when my time management strategy revolves around a complicated triage system where I keep the balls in the air that absolutely must stay up and allow the others to fall where they may until I have time to get them moving again. (I call this the “what will break/what will bounce” method - if it can bounce, I can drop it.)

The overachiever, responsible, disciplined side of my brain balks at this willy-nilly approach to meeting my self-imposed goals and it says nasty things to me when I can’t live up to my own expectations. Note: I’m not implying that any of this is rational or reasonable. But it is how my brain works, so I’ve had to figure out how to work with it.

I wanted to make goals! I wanted to achieve! I wanted to check off boxes on a list to prove that I was making progress! But days and weeks of failure to live up to my own (admittedly ridiculous) expectations caused no end of frustration! 

Until I came across the low bar/high bar method, I didn’t have a good way to formulate a strategy that would give me the grace I need to manage wildly varying days while keeping the super conscientious part of myself satisfied that progress was being made. 

The low bar/high bar idea is fairly straight forward. When you set a goal, you choose a low bar and a high bar. Using writing as an example, you might want to write every day this year. So your high bar is 366 days! (It’s a leap year!) But realistically, you know life will happen. So you also set a low bar. Maybe the low bar could be to write 150 days of the year. 

You can decide if you want the high bar to be a stretch and the low bar to be easy, or if you want the high bar to be what you expect to do daily and the low bar to be what happens when life roughs you up. You get to choose where the bar is! 

Fair warning: Depending on your wiring and mentality, this may turn out to be more challenging than you might think it would be. I grew up hearing the saying, “I’d rather aim for the stars and hit a stump than aim for a stump and blow my toe off.” I didn’t realize just how much I’d internalized this nugget of wisdom until I seriously considered …. well …. aiming for a stump! Everything in me rebelled! Why bother setting a minuscule goal? What’s the point? 

But wow is it satisfying to be able to say, “I’m meeting my goals.” And there’s a lot of evidence that meeting tiny goals gives us the discipline to meet larger goals. (Read Atomic Habits for more on this!)

In my case, I couldn’t quite bring myself to set a low bar for everything. So at the beginning of 2024, I chose a combination of “regular” goals and low bar/high bar goal. Some of my regular goals feel low enough that I didn’t think I needed an even lower bar! And some of the tougher goals are important enough that I didn’t want to shortchange myself by being okay with something less.

But y’all, when I did set a low bar, wow. It was freeing. Some of my low bar goals are so low, the only way I could fail to meet them would be to completely forget about them. And that, as it turns out, is the whole point. I can get so busy trying to meet the “shoot for the stars” goals that I eventually give up entirely on the smaller goals. But those goals are important to! I really do want to read more books on writing craft, and I do want to develop a few more classes that I can teach. By giving myself a low bar to shoot for, I’m more likely to keep the less urgent but still important goals in mind … and make real progress toward them. 

Would you consider setting low bar/high bar goals? What kind of goals do you think would work well for this method? 

If your New Year’s Resolutions have already crashed and burned, it’s not too late to have a productive year. Revisit them. Set a low bar/high bar and give them another go. 

And a quick reminder: Your worth is not in your achievements or the items you’ve checked off a list. You are an image bearer of the One True God. You are beloved. If lists and goals condemn you, then I’d like to lovingly encourage you to ignore everything I just said and lean hard into keeping your focus on finding your peace in the arms of the One who loved you first and still loves you best. 

Grace and peace,

Lynn

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Low Bar/High Bar Goal Setting for Writers from author @LynnHBlackburn on @EdieMelson (Click to Tweet)

Don't Miss the Rest of Lynn's Posts on Goal Setting!

January: Meet Your Writing Goals This Year with These Valuable Tips
February: Tips to Divide Up Your Writing Time Into Valuable Chunks

March: Low Bar/High Bar Goal Setting for Writers

Lynn H. Blackburn is the award-winning author of Unknown Threat, Malicious Intent, and Under Fire, as well as the Dive Team Investigations series. She loves writing swoon-worthy southern suspense because her childhood fantasy was to become a spy, but her grown-up reality is that she's a huge chicken and would have been caught on her first mission. She prefers to live vicariously through her characters by putting them into terrifying situations while she's sitting at home in her pajamas! She lives in Simpsonville, South Carolina, with her true love, Brian, and their three children. Learn more at www.lynnhblackburn.com.