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Happy New Years Everyone!
I’ve been thinking a lot about goals and goal setting lately with the new year here and everything and I wanted to give some thoughts on how to set better and more achievable goals!
New Years is always an interesting time for me. Every year I tell myself I’m not gonna fall into the resolution trap of making these generic goals like “lose weight”, “eat better”, “be outside more”, yet every year I find myself falling back into these goals like a trap set for an overconfident animal.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with these goals inherently. I’m sure everyone would feel better about themselves if they lost a little bit of weight, took more hikes, or traded that greasy pizza for a salad. So we write “lose weight” on a piece of paper with the word “GOALS” in big bold letters on the heading, we get a gym membership, we throw away all the trash food and replace it with greens, and then we…….forget about it by March.
Like I said, theres nothing wrong with wanting these things, but I think we are approaching how we set goals a little too broadly. I think that instead of “lose weight” as the goal, we set a more specific goal like “run 5k” or “be able to play with my son without getting tired after 15 mins” (okay maybe that’s just a me thing but the point still stands).
I’ve personally found that when I can be more specific with a goal and make it an “actionable goal” then I have a higher chance of success and pushing through the inevitable hard time that will come hunting me down around May…or maybe even February.
“How can this help me in my music business?”
Well I’m glad you asked, dear reader!
The way I’ve used this in the last few years is to:
have an overarching goal
take the time to dissect what that actually looks like for me on a day to day
and then turn that into an more actionable goal
As an example, I have a goal to write more this year. I’ve found that writing helps me think through ideas that can be then turned into things like a YouTube video, this newsletter, or even just putting down something can help me form a solid opinion on an idea. So my initial goal starts as:
write more this year
Now I need to be more specific about it. I’ve listened to a bunch of podcasts from writers across different genres and they all suggest writing daily as a good practice, but in a Podcast interview with Nathan Barry (founder of ConvertKit) on “Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal” they talked about the idea of simply writing 1,000 words a day regardless of whether it’s usable or not. I really like this idea but 1,000 words seems like a lot to start out with, so I’m gonna half that and my new goal becomes:
Write 500 words a day
Let’s take it a step further, be more specific, and make it more actionable from a schedule perspective. I know from experience that it takes me about 2 hours to write 1,000 words. That includes allowing for time to get distracted or have to think about what I want to write about on a given day. Since we are halving the total amount of words written per day from 1,000 to 500 then let’s half the amount of time and then my new and final goal becomes:
write for 1 hour every day
This is an actionable and schedule appropriate goal, because I can split the time up as needed (1 set of an hour, 2 sets of 30 mins, 4 sets of 15 mins, etc) based on my daily schedule. It also allows me to be flexible with my daily schedule when unexpected things come up, as long as I am consistent with setting aside an hour of total time to write per day.
Taking the time to physically write this process down can also make it a less daunting task overall. Putting pen/pencil to paper let’s the ideas get out of your head and let’s you take the time to think about the next step rather than trying to keep everything inside your easily distracted brain.
Another thing I found extremely helpful is setting aside quarterly (every 3 month) check-ins on my calendar to go over my goals and make sure I’m on track or if not, how I can make the changes necessary to get back on track! This allows me to be flexible and make changes based on my progress. If I find myself barely being able to type an hour then I’ll drop it to 30 minutes, or if my schedule is more open than I thought I can up it from one hour a day to two hours a day!
This idea can be extrapolated across a ton of other ideas such as:
- Instead of “write more music”, it turns into “write a song a week”
- Instead of “read 50 books”, it turns into “read one chapter every day”
- Instead of “be outside more”, it turns into “hike every Saturday morning”
- Instead of “get better at music production”, it turns into “make a beat everyday”
(Which I plan on doing for the month of January)
So what do you think about this approach to goal setting?
Is this something you will try as you are setting goals for 2024?
(Reply to this newsletter with your thoughts, I’d love to hear them!)
I’m very excited about all the things that are being setup to happen in 2024 (all of which I will most definitely be sharing as they happen on this newsletter), but I’m most excited to see all of YOU achieve the goals you have in mind this year. Imagine being able to look back in December, blown away at all the things you were able to do with your actionable goals you set for yourself! That’s what I want for YOU this year.
Keep On Creating
- drû
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