Goal setting is an important part of being an entrepreneur. When slow season comes around, I take the time to ensure I reflect on my goals of the year, and start small tasks to ensure I can accomplish them. This year is a big year, My goals this year for example are the following:
- Completion of a 45 minute street circle show – Winning Wendy – En Français
- Continuation of research for Poetry in Motion – my theater piece
- Running a Marathon
- Training for 2 different World Record attempts
- Creation of a 5 minute contact juggling dance piece
- A Europe & Japanese tour to present my work
- Writing a blog regularly
- Consistent training in running, biking, swimming, circuit training, flexibility clowning and juggling
- Creation of my second filmed tutorial series
- Obtain fluency in the French language
- Take more photos!
These goals use a variety of skills and resources which take motivation, persistence, some organization to accomplish. The biggest key to all goal setting is start small, and work consistently. I have arranged my life around these goals in a way which ensures I do something every week to move forward towards them. I try to avoid perfection at the beginning, believing the mantra it is all a learning curve and will correct itself in time. I try to take the do the work approach. Any perfectionist tendencies bring me to procrastination and avoidance behaviors. Instead, doing the work compels me to get something done – slowly, imperfectly, but it’s done, every day.
Some examples:
- I am working daily to accomplish a weekly goal of 5 minutes of script for the Winning Wendy show, which I record each week with a video camera. I don’t fully worry about quality yet, just creating the bits, then editing them at the beginning of March when I will have 40 minute pieces of the show that I can edited or lengthen when the time to critique comes.
- I take a photo a day with my phone and upload it to Instagram. It’s not much, but it only takes 5 minutes, and it helps me learn about composition and keeps me thinking about what makes good photos. It also adds to the gratitude project – where I send out post cards every November to give gratitude to those I know.
- In January, running every second day is the goal to set a pattern for the year. It will help me learn if it is too much or too little. So far – I’m exhausted, but I believe I will get stronger over the month!
- To create the 5 minute piece I have contacted a mentor to ask if he would be interested in Directing the piece with me, spending a week on choreography and dance aspects of the piece (It is still in negotiation). Also – I have taken on the 30 day challenge – posting a new move every day to Instagram for 30 days in a row. This ensure I am both accomplishing the juggling training and the new show ideas.
- Writing a blog takes a bit of courage – and the key is WRITE! Spend 1 hour a day writing, even if I won’t publish it. Hopefully, the more I write, the more I will publish. It also gives me a place to have constructive downtime from the 2-8 hours of physical training I am doing.
- I spend 30 minutes a day using DuoLingo, a free online language application you can put on your phone! It’s wonderful, and has helped me immensely. Immersed myself in the French language by living in France this year is obviously the easiest (read – sink or swim) way to learn a language, and duolingo gives me the grammatical rules and writing practice I need to broaden my understanding to the fullest.
As you can imagine, this takes up a lot of my time – but like I said, it’s currently the slow season. My life is lucky – and I understand not everyone has 2 months to create a new show before the streets are warm enough to get out there. If you have a full life already, I recommend only taking one or two new things on at a time, as these challenges can be overwhelming. I have been building my strength on each of these tasks for months in advance, and being able to go hard now is a privilege of being an entrepreneur and an artist. These shows will be the foundations of my work for the remainder of my life – it’s like the school of life.
If you don’t make small commitments every day, you set yourself up for failure. The goals need to be tangible and manageable. If you reach 80% of your goals, it’s a success – you can’t win them all! Start small, add things bit by bit. I started walking 30 minutes last February before I began running 1-2kms 3 times a week. It’s been a slow and gradual process to get up to this big marathon goal! Bonus – Learning French & running a marathon have been on my bucket list since I was a teen! It’s time to do this!
This list is simply an example of a way I break down my goals. I take a look at my goals monthly and rework them to ensure they are within my reach. I recommend you do what I have done break down your big goals and put them into manageable chunks into your daily and weekly life to ensure you can make the changes you need to complete the dreams of your choice.
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