To make resolutions or not—is that the question?
My birthday is on New Year’s Eve, so it’s natural for me to add birthday-inspired contemplation about my life to the gravitational attraction that the end of the year seems to exert in the direction of taking stock of the year just passed, as well as anticipating the one that’s about to begin. And, let’s face it, creativity-related resolutions are always popular: there are plenty of people who would like to make 2010 the year they finish their novel, write a screenplay or perform their songs in public.
A couple of years ago, I wrote a
New Year’s Eve post about making your creative goals a reality. I identified clarity, intent, and persistence as key to moving resolutions past the “wishful thinking” phase.Here are some bite-sized thoughts drawn from that post.
Key #1: Clarity. In the graphic design world, “resolution” refers to the clarity of an image. Being clear about what you want to achieve creatively is beneficial because it makes your next steps more obvious. “I want to be more creative in 2010″ is low on the clarity scale; “I would like to write a screenplay for a full-length feature film in 2010″ is clear and can help you figure out, based on where you are now, what the first steps toward that goal would be.
Key #2: Intent. If you succeed in keeping your resolution, what will that bring you? Robert Fritz, in his excellent book
The Path of Least Resistance, asserts that knowing what you do want to achieve and combining that vision with a clear-eyed look at where you are now produces a “creative tension” that makes it much easier to propel yourself forward.
Key #3: Persistence. More than talent or natural ability, creative success depends on your ability to keep practicing your art, no matter how well or badly you feel things are going. Research by Martin Seligman, director of the
University of Pennsylvania’s
Positive Psychology Center, and others indicates that as much as
75 percent of lifetime success is determined by a person’s willingness to persist in the face of the setbacks that typically occur in any long-term endeavor.
There, now that you know how to set goals for your creative activity in 2010, I’m going to challenge the notion that you need to do it in a conventional manner.
Laura Spencer, writing on Freelance Folder blog,
challenges freelance artists to get past the numbers-based goals they may set for themselves each year, such as increasing revenue by a certain percentage, or picking up 10 new clients, and ask themselves some probing questions about how the past year has really gone. Here are a couple of her questions that I find especially appropriate for creative folk in general …
“Am I doing the type of work that I really want to be doing? If you answered “yes” to this question, you can breathe a huge sigh of relief. However, if you answered “no,” then you have some work to do. You need to find out exactly what is keeping you from the work that you would really like to be doing. If it’s a lack of education or training, then getting that training should be one of your goals. If it’s your marketing efforts, then changing your marketing should be a goal.
“Which projects did I struggle with the most, and why? You can learn a tremendous amount from projects that didn’t go very well. Much of what you learn can be incorporated into your goals for the coming year. Make a list of what you think went wrong with the project. Was the client communication poor or lacking? If so, better client communication can become one of your goals. Was the service and/or product that your provided excellent? If not, better output should become a goal.”
Spencer’s post helps freelancers, and any working artist, stay focused on deeper questions of meaning when goal setting, even while they grapple with the very real need to apply business sense to what they do.
Even if you find that you’re satisfied with your goals for 2010, it’s entirely possible that you’ll come up with a weekly or monthly to-do list based on those goals that’s far too long to reasonably accomplish. In that case, you may want to also draw up a
to-don’t list, which is simply a list of actions which you are currently doing which are not high priorities at this time, and which you are willing to forego doing, at least for the immediate future. When you make a to-do list, for new every item you add, be prepared to move at least one other item (and more likely two or three) to the to-don’t list.
Finally, another sage perspective on this whole goal-setting-at-New-Year’s business comes from Leo Babauta at Zen Habits blog. In a post penned earlier this year, Babauta asserts that
being open to what emerges, rather than creating detailed blueprints for meeting our goals, can lower stress and remove the possibility of frustration and disappointment if those goals are not achieved. As he puts it,
“You don’t know what will happen, or what opportunities will arise, until you arrive at that moment. You can plan and plan and plan, but there is just no way to know how things will turn out. And if my plan doesn’t include an opportunity that I didn’t see coming, I might miss that opportunity. Sure, I could continually adjust my plans based on changing circumstances … but then, what’s the point of the plan?
“Instead, I have forgone the need to define outcomes, and have focused on enjoying the journey. That doesn’t mean I’m not motivated to do my best — I am — nor does it mean that I take a lackadaisical attitude toward my work (although I do get lazy, like anyone else). It means that I’m motivated by the work, that I enjoy the activity, not by the destination, goal or outcome.”
Enjoying the creative journey—now that’s a goal I think we can all get behind. However you prepare for the new year, I hope 2010 is filled with moments of creative enjoyment and delight for you!
