Creating Goals That ACTUALLY Motivate You as a Creative

Goals are so important in every part of your life. If you don’t have a goal it’s the same as shooting an arrow blindfolded and trying to hit a target.

It’s just not gonna happen.

The bottom line is if you don’t have goals you don’t have direction.

If you don’t have direction who knows where you’ll end up.

This aimlessness IS avoidable

Your life is too important to be spent doing things you don’t want to do for results you don’t even want to end up living a life given to you.

Luckily, creating and setting goals for yourself is not a difficult process, however, there are definitely nuts and bolts of goals that can affect how motivated you are by those goals.

So, I have compiled three major points for creating motivational goals for you as a creative.

Tip 1. Define Your Aspirations

The very core of creating goals that are meaningful for you is that they are completely lucid with your dreams and aspirations.

In order to create a motivational goal you NEED to understand what you dream about happening with your future.

So your first step is write down EXACTLY what you want to happen in your life. If it’s not written down it’s nothing.

Do Now

Do it right now, find a bit of paper or a blank document at the top of the page and write;

“In 10 years from now, what will my life look like?”

Just write everything down you dream would happen.

For example, something I wrote is that I will have published 5 novels that I’m proud of.

This question of the 10 years from now question is from David Schwart’s Excellent book The Magic of Thinking Big

This exercise has shown you exactly what you want to happen in the far future. This is known as your long-term goal.

Now to reach your long-term goals you need to work towards that goal every. Single. Day. This is done through short-term goals.

Short-term goals are things that you want to achieve in the near future, such as I wrote words for my novel every day this week. These goals are supplementary to your long-term goals and are often the steps you take to get to the best success.

Now I want you to pick one of the things you wrote would happen 10 years from now, and consider;

“What would you have to do every day/ week to achieve this goal?”

For my goal of having completed 5 novels in that time, I would have to consitently write about 500-1000 words a day for the next 10 years.

It is important however that your short-term goals are HIGHLY SPECIFIC if you want to hit them consistently. Your long-term goals can be abit broader but specificity will always result in a more concise intention.

For example, if I want to make my short-term goal of writing everyday more specific it would be somethinglike;

“I will write 1000 words between 4pm and 7pm at my desk for the next week”

Keeping this goal consistent for each week allows for massive progress over minimal stakes.

Tip 2. Find Your Motivation

If we are to make these goals motivating for you, we need to understand what are your motivations for achieving this goal.

In their essence goals are intimately linked with your intrinsic passion for a concept. This is important as more often than not, your motivation for some result is because it’s something you can point at and say I did that thing and I loved doing it.

So ask yourself;

“what are/is the reason/s for wanting to achieve this goal?”

For example, for my goal of publishing 5 novels in 10 years, I want to achieve this because a novel (for me) is a clear indicator of discipline, motivation and passion, and I think being able to publish 1 novel alone is a great achievement of grit and perseverence, which is what I’m all about.

If you understand why you want to get a result then you can make sure you are constantly reminded of why you are putting in the hard work.

It’s all to easy to put in so much work for something and forget why you started doing it in the first place. Understanding your motivations will allow us to negate that situation from ever happening.

This step is important before going to the next and final step. Personal motivations are going to be a critical energy source for sustaining your commitment to the goal over extended periods of time.

Tip 3. Cultivate Consistency

It is critical that you develop a consistent and realistic routine to achieve your short-term goals consistently as well as eventually reaching your long-term goals.

You need a system or a habit that gets you to have repeated acts of progression towards your goals otherwise you can get stagnant, not moving anywhere.

There are lots of factors that effect the creation of a sustinable schedule that works for you. I have made a post that talks about creating a creative routine but I will summarise the main points, although I do reccomend you read the post as well.

3 Simple Steps to Build A Writing Routine For Maximum Productivity

In making a creative routine it needs to be based on your passion and motivation for your creations

Progress is the goal. Your routine wont and doesn’t need to be perfect the goal is just to get progress not perfection.

Regularly adapt and change your routine as needed.

Routine is the means by which you can create order from the chaos of your daily life. It creates a sacred time of the day seperate from this chaos forming balance between your aspirations and daily commitments.

So, if you want to be regularly motivated to achieve your goal you just need to see yourself making progress, and a daily routine is perfect for that.

Conclusion

Congratulations! By this point you have at least one long-term goal backed by some short-term goals that motivate you to achieve what you set your mind too, the tips I discussed are;

You need to define your aspirations to truly find a motivating goal
Motivation is key to consistency and progress
Routine is essential to regularly achieve this progression towards your dreams

However, do recognise that these tips are adaptable and can evolve with your creative journey.

If you have any experiences or insights of effective goal setting don’t be afraid to share it in the comments.

Thanks for Reading and Goodluck Creating 🙂

Hope you enjoyed this post, if you did you’ll enjoy this post about creating a distraction-free writing space to boost your productivity;

Creating a Distraction-Free Writing Space: Boosting Focus and Productivity

Thanks for your support, happy writing