Transcripts
1. Introduction: Tell me if this sounds familiar. It's January, and you're really fired up about your
goals for the new year. You get really specific
about exactly what you want. Maybe you even broke down your goal into
actionable steps, and you have a really clear
plan on how to get it done. But as you start
working on the goals throughout the year,
you don't see progress. Maybe you get distracted
by day to day life, or new ideas keep popping up and you're not
sure what to work on. By the end of the year,
you have to review your goals because you can't even remember
what you wrote down. Maybe you can't even find the piece of paper
you wrote them down. Year, I would sit
down to brainstorm, and I would decide
that this is the year. But over the course of the year, I would slowly lose excitement about it or get distracted. And by the end of the year, I was ashamed when I looked at my goals because I hadn't done
anything to make progress. Goals are supposed to be
uplifting and motivating, right? But my goals felt like
they were either too lofty to achieve or they became boring, and they
felt like a chore. Hi, my name is Ashton Womack an artist at Virgo and paper, where I design artwork for all kinds of stationary
and lifestyle products, and I also teach online classes. Over the past few years, I've worked to change my
mindset around goals, and I've developed a lot of tips and tricks that have worked to actually help me follow through and achieve
what I set out to do. In this class we'll brainstorm
goals and we'll choose a goal to map out in a
clear and actionable way. We'll define success on
our own terms to help us prioritize our goals and work on fewer goals at a time
for bigger progress. The prompts in each lesson
will help you to choose a goal realistic plan to tackle it
with built in strategies for dealing with the unexpected and adapting your
timeline as needed. I hope this class
will help you stay engaged with your goals
through a fresh approach to goal setting that will help
transform your big dreams as creative into clear
and actionable steps. Amazing.
2. Class Project: In each lesson, I'll
share a prompt to help you map out your
goals in a visual way. Your class project is to determine a goal and
use at least one of the strategies that we discussed to break it down and
make it more actionable. This class can be done with
really simple supplies. You just need paper, a pen, and some sticky notes. The class also
includes a bundle of printable worksheets
if you'd like a guide to follow along
through the lessons, and you can download that in the projects and resources
section of the class. Photo of your notes
as you follow along and upload it to your project
section of the class. You can come back to
edit your project later and update us on how
your goal journey is going. If you're feeling
stuck with your goals, feel free to post
any questions you have in the discussion
section of the class. Let's make this class a place where we can cheer
each other on in our goal setting journey and get feedback from
other creatives. Alright, it's time
to take action. Your first take action
prompt is to grab a notebook and pen or print out the worksheets
if you'd like, and proceed to the next
lesson to get started.
3. Introducing the Goal Cycle: Goal setting systems
often emphasize setting annual goals
or 90 day goals. But I found that sometimes my path to achieving
a goal is winding, and it can take
longer than I think. Have you ever set
a goal in January, and when you didn't achieve it by December, you felt
like you failed, even if you actually did end up achieving the goal later on, I had a goal that I
wrote over and over, and I never achieved it
within the span of year. So it's clear that my
process wasn't working. But I ended up actually
achieving that goal later on. What changed? My
approach changed. Instead of a linear journey
with a set timeline, I started to have better success with setting
and achieving goals when I looked at them
as a cyclical process, one of the parts is reflecting and assessing your
current goals. The next part is
defining success, then creating your goals, and then creating an action
plan to achieve them. And then we move back to
reflecting and assessing again. It's an ongoing process
through those four steps. And I really think you can start with any part of the puzzle. Just make sure to follow through to the next
step of the process. Of the advantages of
looking at goals this way is that we're always
making forward progress. It doesn't need to be
January to set goals. We can work on it anytime and be adaptable with our timelines, and we can go as quickly or
as slowly as we need to. We're engaging with our
goals on an ongoing basis. And most importantly, we're
able to recover from failure. For example, maybe you
set a goal and you have a really defined action plan
and you're ready to go, but you run into some
unexpected roadblocks. We can reassess and redefine what success looks
like at that time. Come up with a better plan. When we achieve a
goal, we can excitedly reflect and celebrate and
move on to the next steps. Now that we've talked
about the goal cycle, let's take action by identifying a time in the past
when you had trouble with goal setting a goal
that you try to reach and you feel like you failed or a goal that
you've given up on, but you still hope that maybe you'll be able
to achieve it one day. Go ahead and write
that failure down and hang on to it because we'll
use it in a later lesson.
4. Define Success: Life Areas: A common pitfall in goal setting is just working on too
many goals at one time. So I like to choose
just a few to work on. Now, that doesn't mean that
you can't have a long list of things you'd like to achieve
and be really ambitious, but it just means that we'll
pick a few to work on at one time so that you have more time to
dedicate to each goal. My favorite strategy to
do this is to divide your life into several different
categories or buckets. Determining what these categories
are will just give you a starting place to think about and brainstorm some goals. Suggest just choosing
a few labels to cover the different
areas of your life. So you can think about the
places that you regularly go and the responsibilities that
you have for some ideas. So, for example, the
categories you might choose might be
things like career, family, finances,
spirituality, creativity, health and wellness, and so on. Really up to you to
define what's important. So I encourage you to
write this down on paper, and this will be like a
bookshelf for your many ideas. So go ahead and take action, write down a few categories
that describe your life and brainstorm any goal ideas that
you have for these areas. Ask yourself, what does success in this area
look like for me? It's okay if you're struggling to think of ideas on the spot. Again, this is a bookshelf. So feel free to come
back to this page anytime when you have
new ideas popping up. For now, just circle one goal in each area that
you'd like to work on.
5. Create Goals: What is a Goal?: In this lesson,
we'll talk about how to define goals that
are meaningful to you. Here's a few things that
we can think about. One, goals aren't
responsibilities. A lot of times when I'm trying
to think of goal ideas, I get stuck at the level
of responsibilities. Responsibilities are all
the different things for those different areas of our lives that
we have to do on a regular basis just
to maintain life. So maintenance tasks
for our home or regular cleaning
that we have to do paying bills to
maintain our finances. Now, I actually think
it's really helpful to go ahead and write
all of these things down because a list of these tasks can serve as a
really helpful planning tool. But when it comes
to goal setting, we're going to set
that list aside. Because goals go beyond these
basic responsibilities. Goals are the ideas that are
going to take our life or business or finances
to the next level. They might look like
a big accolade, something you could
put on your resume or an item to cross
off your bucket list, something you can be
really proud of and say, I did that confidently. Goals are personal. I found
that the goals that I am most proud of are the ones that are the
most personal to me. So your goals might seem to fit a conventional definition of
success or they might not. Might be pursuing a
goal even when those around you don't really understand what
you're doing or why. A typical goal setting framework that you'll see are smart goals. This acronym stands
for specific, measurable, actionable,
realistic, and time bound. And this acronym gives us some helpful points
to think about. But in my opinion, it leaves
out the personal meaning and passion that will motivate
us to follow through see the goal to the end.
Especially as creatives, a lot of times we need to
capitalize on our passion about a subject to find the
energy to follow through. So I encourage you to work on goals that
are exciting to you, even if they don't quite fit that smart goal
framework perfectly. You might be passionate
about a goal, even if you're not sure if it's achievable, and
that's a good thing. Harness that passion to help
motivate you into action. Goals often take
longer than we think. Imagine you're playing football. It's the final
moments of the game, and everyone's counting on you. Time is counting down
on the scoreboard, and you have to make a goal. Right now, the pressure is someone like me, this
would not be possible. But for an experienced
player with years of training in the
game, it's possible. It's possible because
of the million times they've practiced the game
when no one was watching, and now they're able to make
the goal when it matters. To me, goal setting
is like that. It can take months or even years to finally
achieve a goal. A lot of times it
takes more practice or learning and growing
than we initially thought. Before we're able to
achieve that big goal. So I encourage you to broaden your mindset on the
time frame that goals take and allow them to be really long term
goals if need be. And the next lesson, we'll
talk about the approach that I use to stay focused on
goals for the long term. It's time to take action. Choose one of the
goal ideas that you brainstormed in
the last lesson and write it out as a
statement that is personally meaningful
and motivating to you.
6. Action Plan: Goal Breakdown: In this lesson, we're
going to take our goal and break it down into
actionable steps. Just as we determined which
categories of life are important to us and what success looks like in those areas, we also need to define a goal, a project, and a task. I'll share my definition with you and feel free to use these exactly or modify them a
little bit to work for you. For me, the end goal is the
overarching, big aspiration. Form of recognition
for my hard work. It's usually something that cannot be achieved
in the short term. So a goal typically would take anywhere from
a couple of months, all the way up to a few years. With a goal, I'm often not sure exactly when the
goal will be achieved. And that's okay because I have specific time frames for
my projects and tasks. Projects can be completed
in a shorter timeline. They can take anywhere from a few days to a
couple of months. Projects do have a
specific due date, and projects are
really the focus of my energy because they're
short enough to keep me engaged and big enough that I can see big progress
on my goals. Finally, tasks are what
make up those projects. Tasks are activities that I can complete in less than a day. Usually, they can be completed
within an hour or two. It's got to be something that I can take action on quickly. I've noticed that if I'm
writing a task down on my to do list over and over
and it's not getting done, usually the reason is
because it needs to be broken into an
even smaller task. My favorite method is
to use sticky notes to break down my goals,
projects, and tasks. This helps me to visualize
my goals and my projects. It's a way to stay
engaged with my goals and actually see progress
on them every single day. I always know when
I sit down to work which task on which
project I'm working on. And I can see how that fits
into the bigger picture. And if I'm not sure
what I'm working on, that usually means it's time to readjust and move some
sticky notes around until I'm clear on how my projects are actually
leading me towards my goals. If working on projects or tasks takes longer
than I expected, I can easily readjust. All right, let's use
some sticky notes to break down our goals
into projects and tasks. I like to put my sticky notes onto my dry erase board
that lives in my office. So that way, I can
easily keep them. They don't lose
their stickiness, and I can quickly
move them around. So I have a few different
colors of sticky notes. I like to use different colors for the goals,
projects, and tasks. I'm going to use this green to write down my big
overarching goal. An example, I'm going
to use a goal that I have set and
achieved in the past, so I can show you exactly
how I would break it down. For my goal, I want to shift
25% of the revenue for my online business from selling physical products to
selling digital products. So this was a big
goal of mine that required a lot of different
projects to get it done. I'm going to put my big
goal right at the top. And then for projects, I'm going to use a different
color, sticky note. So you can start brainstorming different project ideas that
might get you to your goal. One project idea would be
to teach an online class. Another project might be to pitch your portfolio of
artwork to potential partners. And another project might be growing your newsletter
or social media audience. You can see how
these projects might be examples of things that could be goals in and of
themselves that could be broken down
into smaller projects. But I'm including these
as projects because, for example, the growing
the newsletter subscribers. It is a big project, but it does contribute
to my overall goal, which is more long term. I can give these projects
specific due dates. So for the newsletter
subscribers, let's say that I wanted to reach a certain amount of
subscribers, let's say, 2,500, and I wanted to reach
it by the end of the year. Now, I'm going to use
yet another color to represent my tasks because
tasks are so small, I think it's easy to
just list a bunch of different tasks
on one sticky note. So, for example, in
teaching an online class, I might need to do
some research into potential topic ideas and kind of decide on what
I'd like to teach, maybe write a class outline, gather any materials,
film the class. The class and finally post the class and do any
other marketing tasks. So I'll stick that under
teaching all in class. And now I'll go on to brainstorm tasks for my other projects. So you can see how easy
it can be to break down the goal into different projects that have corresponding tasks. Now, let's say you have multiple goals going at the same time. So maybe this is a work goal
that you're working on, but you also have a personal
goal of buying a new car. Similarly, for this goal, I'll break it down into corresponding projects like
researching what car to buy, saving money, and
selling my existing car. This is a good example
of some projects that I feel like are simple enough that I don't
need to break it down into further tasks. So I don't always
take that step, but I definitely do for those
projects that are a little bit more complicated.
So take action. Write your goal down
on a sticky note, and break it down into some
smaller projects and tasks. Now, this is a great
framework for goals, but we haven't talked
about a time frame yet. And the next lesson,
we'll establish a timeline for projects.
7. Reflect: Time Assessment: When reflecting on your goals, it's important to think
about how much time you actually have
to work on them. So you can figure out how many projects you can
manage at one time. You could think about this
in terms of the hours per day or week that you have
available to work on goals. I'll give you an example. For my work goals, I have
about 20 hours a week to work, and my regular
maintenance tasks for work take up about a third
to a half of that time. Meaning that I'm left with
about ten to 13 hours a week to work on projects
that will go towards my goals. I can comfortably work on one or maybe two
projects at a time, depending on the
size of the project. If you're wondering, wait, how do you know
how many hours you have to work on your goals? It's really simple. Track
your time over the course of a week on all of your
regular responsibilities. You can do this really easily in something like
Google calendar or ICL because it's
really easy to just drag and drop colorful boxes, or you can keep track on
paper if it's easier. It's important to actually
assess the time that you have available because this changes as our life and
responsibilities change. This will help you think realistically about
your projects. Okay, so with all this in mind, let's take a look at
our sticky notes again. Let's establish a
timeline for our goals. I like to outline the
upcoming four to six months using some fun,
transparent sticky notes. And then I like
to leave space at the end of my timeline
so that I kind of have room to play around
and move some of my sticky notes if I'm not sure where they should
go yet on my board. So having done my time assessment
will help me figure out how many projects I
can comfortably work on at once within
the span of a month. And so let's say after doing
my time assessment that I figured out that I can work on one work project at a time, and I can work on maybe two
personal projects at a time. So that'll help me
figure out where to place my projects
on my timeline. The next most
important project for this goal is going to be
teaching the online class. So go ahead and place
that in November, and I'll place the corresponding tasks right next to that. And then I have to decide which
projects would come next. And let's say that December is going to be really
busy for my business. And so I don't think
I can actually do a project above my regular maintenance
tasks for that month. And so I would then place my next most important
project in January. And then I would place
this project down here. So I know that this
just comes next. Maybe I complete
this in the spring. And then I'm going to put
my corresponding tasks right next to those projects. If it's helpful, you
could even add in a sticky note here
to kind of remind yourself that you're not able to take on a project
at this time. Now, I'm able to do two
personal projects at this time, so I can go ahead and do the research for buying
the car in November, and I can also start
saving money right away. I have an idea of how long
these projects would take, that would give me
an idea of when I would be able
to reach my goal. And so let's say I've decided that I'm going to
actually going to shop for the car
sometime in January. So that would be a
good time to sell the car because I'm going to need a vehicle up
until that point. So you can kind of see how your timeline is
playing out here. Recommend using paper sticky
notes for this process, just because the tactile
element is really helpful in having you actually regularly engage with your
goals all the time. But if you're in a
pinch or you just prefer using a digital tool, the stickies app for Mac is really awesome
for this process. You can easily drag
and drop sticky notes. You can hide your stickies
or show them anytime. So they're always right
there on your desktop. My favorite part is that
you can easily color code the notes because color
coding is always fun. In order to take action, record your time and figure out how much time you actually
have to work on your goals. Determine how many projects
you can work on at once, then give your
projects a timeline. Goal setting is a
continuous cycle, so don't let perfection
hold you back here. You can update this
timeline anytime you need.
8. Reflect: Time Management Tips: I'd like to share a few of my best tips for working
with limited time. One is batch working
or block working. You've probably heard
of this method, and it's just working on similar tasks
within one sitting. That way, you're not
constantly shifting gears. So for example, instead of checking my email a
little bit every day, I like to just check all of my emails in one sitting
about twice a week. It takes a little bit longer, but I found that it really
frees up my time because I don't feel like I
have to constantly hang out in my email inbox. Of course, it's helpful if you
work with no distractions. That means your phone
outside of the room, the door closed, if you can. Have a beverage at your
desk with you and just have everything ready to
focus as soon as you start. This can be really
hard at first. So I suggest giving yourself little rewards
to help you get through. Maybe it's having a
snack or listening to a favorite song or messaging
a friend really quickly. Any small thing that you're
looking forward to can be a reward to help you get
through the working session. After a while, I think
you'll find that the boost in productivity becomes
the reward itself. Also suggest to set a timer. You might have heard
Parkinson's law, and that's that the tasks
that you need to do will expand to fill whatever
time you give them. So if you give yourself 8
hours to complete something, it'll take 8 hours. But if you give
yourself only 2 hours, it'll take just 2 hours. I've been surprised by how
often that's actually true. So you can try setting a timer and challenging
yourself to beat the clock. My final tip is for my
fellow perfectionists. My tip is to publish your
work at just 90% perfect. Don't wait for 100%. If you wait for 100%, you might never
finish the project. By putting your work
out there at 90%, you'll get the ball rolling and move on to the next project. And if something comes up
because it wasn't 100% perfect, chances are you can go back later and fix any
small mistakes. It's time to take action. The next time you start
work on a project, try one of these time management
tips to stay focused.
9. Reflect: Get Back on Track: Let's talk about
getting back on track. The most difficult part
of achieving goals can be recovering and moving on when things don't
go as planned. I'd like to share a few
journaling questions that I use to reflect on my goals and reassess where I am and what I need to do
differently to move forward. I'd like to start by asking
myself, what's working? What do I have to
be grateful for? These are the things
that we can celebrate. So you can brainstorm ways
to celebrate and reward yourself for the
progress that you have made and what's
going really well. The second piece of this is to ask myself, what's not working? Where am I currently struggling? First, I like to give myself a little bit
of grace here for the things that I
might have dropped the ball on or I'm
not doing very well. And secondly, to
find new solutions. And this is where the goal
cycle comes in handy. I like to again reassess
what life areas are most important to me
right now and what does success look
like in those areas? Do I need to update
that vision at all? Are the goals that I set for myself still the goals that I want to be
working on right now? What I've identified?
What goals to work on? Do I need to update the timeline on my projects or my goals? A lot of times this just
looks like me in my office reorganizing my sticky notes in order to figure
out a better plan. And I found this to be
the most valuable part of my goal setting process
is being able to be flexible and reassess my
timeline when needed. It's time to take action. Remember when I
asked you to write down a previous goal failure, let's reflect on that using this framework and
figure out if you still want to
pursue that goal or how you can come up with
a better action plan.
10. Reflect: Overcoming Distractions: Let's talk about distractions. What do you do when something
unexpectedly pops up? Maybe life throws
you a curveball, or you get distracted by
yet another creative idea. You have all your goals and
projects already outlined. So how do you deal with the unexpected and still remain
focused on your goals? First, instead of asking
yourself what to say yes to, I want to encourage you to think about what
you're saying no to. Because we have limited time, everything that we say yes to means that we have to
say no to something else. When you have your goals
already mapped out, if something doesn't fit and
work towards those goals, then it's automatically a no. Now, with our sticky no outline, it's easy to pivot if need be. We can easily shuffle
these projects to see where we might be able to fit something else in and whether or not it
aligns with our goals. Let's say that a new opportunity
or project idea pops up. Oftentimes what I'll
do is write it down on a sticky note and see whether it actually fits into
my timeline or not. But most importantly,
I ask myself, will this help me achieve
that bigger goal? Is there a goal
that I can actually put this underneath on my board? If not, it might
be a project that I save for later or say no to. If I say yes to it, then I have to actually
rearrange my sticky notes and figure out where it's going
to fit on my timeline. Here's how you can
take action the next time something
unexpected pops up. Here's a few questions
to ask yourself. Does it align with my goals? Do I need to reassess
what my goals are? If I say no to
this, can I shelve it on my goal
brainstorm for later? If I say yes, where on
my map does it belong? When can I actually work on it? If you decide to say yes, go ahead and break
down that goal or project and figure out where it fits in in the map that
you've already created.
11. Reflect: Stay Connected to Your Goals: Since my goal map lives on this dry erase
board of my office, I can see it while
I work, so it's easy to make quick
updates on a daily basis. As you work on your goal plan, it's important to check
in regularly to re evaluate your goals,
projects, and tasks. I like to update my goal
map at least once a month. Let me show you how I do that. So the absolute best
part of this process for me is crossing things
off when they're complete. When I'm completing
my day to day work, I go on this task list and
actually cross things off, and I can right away, see that I'm making
progress toward my big goals, which is awesome. And so let's say I've
completed all of these tasks, and I've completed this project. When I complete a
project, personally, I like to give it
a big checkmark. Let's say the month of
November is complete now. So I remove my sticking
out, move that to the side. And I like to keep my
completed sticky notes. You could have a place
where you put these. I just have an old
notebook where I like to stick them and just keep them. So I can flip through
my notebook and see all of the awesome
things that I've done. And now let's move our
months up. Let's see. In this case, I would still
be working on that goal, so I'm going to keep
moving that down. So let's say the next
month that we need to add onto our
board is February. And now I have a space opened
up for some new projects. Let's say in
February, my workload gets a little bit lighter. Maybe I actually have room
for two projects now. So the act of actually
moving these sticky notes on a regular basis find
it very helpful to physically touch and move around my sticky
notes each month. By rearranging the notes for my unfinished
projects and tasks, I can naturally decide whether to keep them
in the current month, push them to the next month, or remove them
entirely from my map. And this process also
allows me to see if there's any space freed
up to add new projects. It's time to take action. The end of the month,
reassess your goal map. Make sure to check off your accomplishments and celebrate what you've
been able to do. See where you might need to
readjust the timeline of your daily tasks and projects to help you reach
those big goals.
12. Final Thoughts: Congratulations. You've
completed the class and you are on your way to
achieving your big goals. I invite you to
come back and watch these lessons again anytime you're feeling a
little bit stuck. And you can also post in the discussion area
of the class to get feedback from other students and cheer each other on in your
goal setting journeys. If there's one thing you
take away from this class, I hope it's that by staying continually engaged
with your goals, it can be really simple to break those big
dreams down into actionable steps that you can
see progress on every day. I have one final take
action prompt for you. If you enjoyed the class, please go and leave a review. Let me know your biggest
takeaway from the class. Your review helps the class to be found by other students, and I really appreciate it. Thanks for watching and good luck on your
goal setting journey.
Ashton Womack, Artist & Surface Pattern Designer
