Writing Goal Basics

Having a goal to aim for, whether it be for a specific project or for a period of time, helps focus effort and achieve amazing results.

In this guide we’ll go over how you can set and manage goals for files, projects and your entire account.

Writing Goal Basics

All of our goals are made up of two basic questions:

1. How many words do you want to write?

2. By what date do you want to write those words?

Whether your goal is for a file, project or your account, you’ll answer these two questions in a box that looks like this:

A word is any string of characters that is preceded and followed by a space.

Here are some rules we use when counting words toward goals:

• We only count new words.

• Any words you wrote before setting a goal won’t count toward that goal. So if your file already has 100 words, and you set a goal of 1,000 words, you’ll need to write 1,000 new words in the file.

• Deleted words always count.

• If you write 100 words, but then delete them, they still count toward your goal. This is a 4thewords value we apply across the site, deleted words helped us move forward and so we give you credit for having written them.

• Copy/pasted words always count.

• If you’re adding words to a file, even if they were copy/pasted, we’ll count them as progress made toward that goal. This also applies to when you have the “never count copy/pasted” account setting on as we’re tracking total words added.

Time across 4thewords is localized to you and your timezone. A day starts after midnight and ends at 11:59 PM your local time. You can confirm and change your timezone on your Account Settings page.

Here are some rules we use when counting time for your goals:

• Goals end at 11:59 PM on the day you select

• So if you set a goal deadline of March 15th, you’ll have the entire day of March 15th to meet your goal.

• Deadlines must be set for a future date.

• You can’t set goals for today or days in the past.

You can set writing goals for:

1. Account

2. Projects

3. Files

Each level allows you to be more specific when tracking your words.

• Account goal: tracks every word you write in all of your files

• Project goals: track only the words written in files that are assigned to this project

• File goals: track only the words written in this file

Let’s look at each of these in detail.