Many artists have day jobs and need to fit their art into the spaces between their work schedule, so successful goal setting enables a way to strengthen your conviction. Email Article Print Article Bookmark RSS Related Content:   Artist Finances   How to Sell Your Art Online   Quit Job for Art?   Create Your Blog

Ten Year Goals

It's good to start with the broad view. Where do you want to be in ten years? How do you see yourself? What will you be doing? How will you be doing it? Where will you be doing it? What kind of compensation will you be receiving? It doesn't matter whether your ten year goals are realistic or unrealistic the first time around. The key here is to write something that excites you, that motivates you to work hard. These goals will be changed again and again on a regular basis as you grow. They are not meant to be set in stone because your life is not set in stone. Your goals should be flexible. However, they should also be written. So, spend some time dreaming about what you would like to see happen in ten years time.

Five Year Goals

Your five year goals should be more realistic. What is the intermediate step that will help get you to your ten year goals? What do you need to accomplish to get you to the next step?

One Year Goals

One year goals are the most important. Write down what you'd like to accomplish by the end of the year. Then write down what you need to accomplish each quarter to achieve that goal. Next, write down what you need to do each month to meet those quarter goals. Break down what needs to happen each week, and then what you need to do each day. This is not planning out your life to the minute. For example, if your ten year goal is to be a novelist, and your five year goal is to have an agent, a publisher, and to be published, your one year goal might be to finish the first draft of a novel. Your first quarter goal would be to have finished half of the first draft, the second quarter, the second half, the third quarter to have finished half of the editing, the fourth, to have edited the entire book. If your goal is to initially get the story down at about 200 pages, then you want to shoot for more than that. A good monthly goal would be to complete 45 pages a month, which is about 10 and a half pages a week or one and a half pages a day. So now you know that to accomplish your goal you're going to have to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and write a page and a half a day to meet your goal. If you get busy and skip days, you know you have to make up enough writing to meet the ten and a half pages a week.

This plan says nothing about when you write, how you write, where you write, whether you do it daily or all in one day once a week or skip sleep once a month and write for 36 hour straight. All it does is set benchmarks so you know you're on track to accomplishing your goals, so that your goals to lay out there like fantasies on the horizon, pretty to look at, but not a reality you'll ever touch.

The idea behind one year goals is to break your goals into bite sized pieces so that you can work on them without being overwhelmed. Many artists have day jobs and need to fit their art into the spaces between their work schedule. Writing out your goals will enable you to do this in a way that will strengthen your conviction.

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