With January on the horizon, everyone’s thinking about the New Year. The countdown, the parties, the end of the current year, and the resolutions. With the resolutions in particular, it seems like it becomes a question of, “Are you making one?” and “What is it?” Some people are pretty invested in making resolutions, and others are not. Either way, setting goals is a good practice in thinking about what you want, and what’s important to you. Something that keeps many people from completing resolutions is that they make big, vague goals that they don’t plan around or really have the motivation for. Other goals tend to suffer from this too. Making goals that you can keep can seem like it’s difficult to do, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s all about making goals and motivating yourself in a way that’s right for you!
Choosing goals
The SMART framework is one that can really help when creating a goal. Smart stands for: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
Let’s try putting a goal through this framework, to give you a good idea of how it works!
Specific: What is the exact thing you want to achieve?
For instance, ‘I want to start making music’ is a bit vague. ‘I want to song write/compose/record vocals’ are much more specific and helps you find more specific resources to aid you.
Measurable: Is there a time period attached to your goal? Is there any way to know how close you are to reaching your goal?
Example: Finding out the components to a track and completing them one by one.
Achievable: What can you do with the resources you have?
If you have time to learn the basics of producing a track, then a suitable goal might be creating a single two-minute song.
Time-bound: When’s the deadline?
Creating a single two-minute song in a month.
Staying motivated
There are a few ways one can get/stay motivated while working towards a goal.
- Team effort
Making a joint goal with others can help with keeping one another accountable through offering reminders, encouragement, and knowing you’re not alone in your efforts.
Even if your goal is something that is really personal, asking others to cheer you on, remind you of your goal, help you with planning, etc, can make the process of working towards a goal much more effective than doing it alone.
- Baby steps
Break up your goal into the smallest pieces you think are reasonable. If you’re writing a song, break up the song into pieces. Courses, bridges, hooks, to work on one at a time. Think about the pieces first before thinking about the whole.
- Five-minute method
If you’re having trouble getting motivated to even take the first step, just tell yourself you’ll start working on it for five minutes. Once the first five minutes is up, if you would like to keep going, try another five minutes, and if that works, then another. You might end up getting through a whole hour with this method. Breaking things into manageable chunks is a good way to make it more manageable
Now the next time you have a goal, you know how to handle it from beginning to end! Go out there and make some goals!
WRITTEN BY: Kris Sanders, Empowerteen Creative Writer Intern
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