Most writers feel overwhelmed at one point or another. In fact, staying focused can be one of the biggest daily challenges. There are always 101 other things that need doing – domestic, social and professional.

This can prevent you from getting your book written and published as quickly as you’d like… and leads to that feeling of there never being enough hours in the day.

Here are some steps you can take to put yourself back on track:

1. Focus on ‘results’ rather than ‘goals’

Goals differ from results. You might have a goal to complete your book by the end of the year. You may even have a series of mini-deadlines to help you achieve this. But what is the RESULT you want? The result you want may be to get published, or to make money, or to establish yourself as an expert. Writing your book is just part of the puzzle to achieve this. Always focus on the outcome, rather than getting bogged down by short-term goals. This helps you to see where you should be spending your time most effectively.

2. Be specific

Results need to be specific to be effective. “Do some writing” is not specific, for example. “Write 10 pages in the next week” is a very specific outcome. As is: “Redraft chapters 1 to 10 in the next 28 days.” This is a much better way of monitoring your progress.

3. Prioritize

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the seemingly ‘urgent’ tasks and lose sight of the truly important ones. Supposing you’ve bought a copy of The Writers Handbook and are wondering which agent to send your book to. But maybe you haven’t written a pitch yet to achieve this outcome. Your first priority would therefore be to write an attention-grabbing pitch. That result would allow you to move on to your next goal of drawing up a shortlist of suitable literary agents. If you sent your book out too early, you’d probably end up with a pile of ’round robin’ rejection letters. If you do things in the right order, it makes it so much easier to achieve results.