Are you a creative person? Do you have a difficult time achieving your goals?
I am a perpetual daydreamer with a million ideas and a hard time executing any of them to fulfillment. I work in bursts of intense devotion, losing myself in a new project – only to get bored when I find a new passion. Good intentions pile on at the beginning of the calendar year. The sad truth is that I don’t even remember what my new year’s resolutions were last year.
This year, I am doing something different.
How to Achieve Goals (for creative people)
Instead of focusing on lofty resolutions with intangible goals attached to them, I created a list of weekly tasks to complete each week for three months. At the end of the three months, I will reevaluate and see if I want to continue on my current tasks, add new tasks, or delete boring tasks.
By focusing on three months instead of a huge year, I feel a little less overwhelmed and a lot less constrained. If I get tired of one of my weekly tasks, I know that there is an end in sight – not too far away. Still, three months is a sizable enough amount of time that I am likely to make good progress on anything that I work at consistently. Check out my process for creating the weekly list. It might be just what you need to reach YOUR goals.
I made a list.
My biggest problem is that I have way too many ideas and projects to possibly juggle. I can’t do everything, and my constant stream of new ideas distracts me from my current goals. At the beginning of January, I sat down and made a list of all the things I would like to work on. These ranged from book ideas and new websites to personal hobbies and freelancing opportunities. The truth is that I want to work on all of them, but for now I need to narrow my focus.
I made a choice.
I chose which items I wanted to focus on for the next three months. For now, I want to focus on keeping our room clean (yes, room… we live with my mom right now while we save for a mortgage), building the blog and social media, making money online, learning the guitar, and keeping on top of our finances. I also made a secondary list of items that would be fun to work on if I have spare time but are not priorities. These include working with small businesses to design websites, focusing on a new website idea I have, writing a marriage help book, and doing some creative writing.
I made another list.
I made a list of 10 things I MUST DO EVERY WEEK for the next three months. Remember how I said that consistency is my downfall and I pretty much suck at follow through? Well, I decided that having weekly tasks would be better than trying to reach some lofty resolution with an intangible goal. I know that there will be weeks when I do the absolute bare minimum in order to check these items off of my list, BUT I hope that having them front and center in my mind on a weekly basis will help me be more consistent in my execution. I also chose two social media networks to focus on. I used Buffer to place my other social media networks on autopilot while I devote some time (everyday ideally) to Pinterest and Instagram. My weekly to-do list is:
Yes, I know that some of these are easy to cross off. Network is vague on purpose. Some weeks I will spend a lot of time focusing on networking, and others I will probably only send one email. The point is that if I do everything on this list every single week, I will be moving forward. And that’s all a girl can ask, right? Plus, I know that I will go beyond the minimum on some tasks every week depending on what sounds fun at the moment. I need to build breathing room into my goals or my creative spirit will suffocate and rebel.
What tools and tips do you have for keeping on track with your goals? Share in the comments.
And don’t forget to check out the Elite Blogging link-up for this week. The topic is Blog Goals for 2015. As you can see, my primary blog goal is just to be consistent in my posting, networking, and social media growth.
Don’t forget to follow me on Pinterest. Bobbie Gross
And it would make my day if you would join my mailing list. I will never send out more than one email every week (and right now it’s more like once a month). The newsletter includes updates on new posts and information about giveaways.
That’s a great idea to make it three months instead of a year! I have a problem with having wayyyy too many projects/ideas too, and am constantly trying to do everything, so I feel your pain. Best of luck to you! :] I love the idea of the master list! I think I’m gonna have to implement that as well!
Yeah. The master list has really helped me stay focused so far. I have already added a few ideas to that list since starting. It’s nice knowing that I can always reevaluate in three months, but for now, I know my direction. Thanks for stopping by, and good luck to you too!
Visiting via Blogging Elite 🙂 This year I’m doing a combination of a planner/scrapbook to keep myself organized and on track and it’s working really well so far. It has room for me to focus on goals each week and lots of room each day to keep track of what I need to do plus jot down things I want to remember. I love having a master list for the month, each week and then specific days.
I love combination planners. When I designed my planners, I made sure to leave lots of blank space just to write things I want to remember in the future. I like to record something I am grateful for each day. Thanks for stopping by.
Breaking your tasks down is such a good idea, mine are all a bit too general, I need to try this! Good luck with your goals this year 🙂
Good luck as you work on breaking them down. I’ve always known that specific goals help, but I had never thought to break things down into weekly habits.
I break mine down into smaller parts too! I’ve got mine broken into each month. You should join my “Be Seen in 2015” group on Facebook – it’s all about motivating and supporting each other in reaching our goals!
Pam, I will have to check that out. Thanks for the suggestion.
Seriously, I don’t know what I would do without lists! I know I will not achieve anything if I don’t write it down multiple times and share my goals with at least one person so they can hold me accountable.
Accountability is the number one reason I decided to post this. Hopefully as new people come in from Pinterest or wherever, it will help me remember to be consistent. I love lists too, but as much as I make them… I don’t always follow through with them. Thanks for stopping by.
I can definitely relate to this post as someone with a ton of ideas floating around all day. I’m actually doing short daily lists so I can hone in on my main priorities each day. Good luck with your 2015 plans & goals! P.S. I just subscribed via email 🙂
I write out all of my daily lists for the week on the Saturday before the week starts. Then I add to them throughout the week as new things arise. That planning day is really helping me keep on track. Thanks for subscribing. I’m so glad I’ve gotten to know you through the Blog Buddy Group.
I am SO all about lists. And another list! haha… This year I have been doing lots more organizing and using planners for my lists. It already is helping! http://www.GlamKaren.com
Karen, I just read your post yesterday about the day planner you use. Hopefully at the end of the year, we will be able to say that we managed to do what we wanted to do in 2015. Thanks for stopping by.
I love that pinterest and instagram daily is on your list. I love that two main hobbies are rules for bloggers!! These are great tools for achieving goals. Thanks for linking up!!
Pinterest daily is so easy for me, but I have a hard time finding something to Instagram on a daily basis. I just started using Instagram last month, but it has already surpassed my Twitter in followers. I have been much more active on Twitter and for a longer time (only about four months, but still). Seeing how fast my Instagram grew and how much engagement I got from my posts convinced me to focus my efforts there rather than on Twitter. Thanks for stopping by.