One of the best ways to further your career in the arts is to focus on setting effective goals that enable you to pursue the career you desire. Below is a text version of the step by step process I outlined on the video to help you set career goals for yourself.
1. Complete An Environmental Scan-Take some time to reflect on how you are doing right at this moment. Are your basic needs of shelter, food and clothing met? How about your career, are you satisfied with the track your career is on? Take a few minutes to sketch out on a piece of paper all of the elements--good and bad--that make up your career.
2. Set Incremental Goals-Using the areas of Work/Life Balance, Financial Stability, and Meaningful Work, identify one area that you want to focus on for the purpose of this exercise. Set some goals for how you will accomplish the work over the next six to twelve months. I like to think in quarters of the year to break up your goals because they become more attainable when you split them up. That means that you have at least four check ins with yourself to see if you're accomplishing your established goals.
3. Set Benchmarks-For example, instead of saying "I'd like to have more artistically fulfilling gigs in three years," say "By July of 2021, I'd like to have a minimum of three more artistically satisfying performance opportunities." This gives you a way to evaluate how you've done each quarter.
4. Set Stretch Goals-Each quarter when you sit down to reflect on the past few months, it's important to set new goals that stretch you to the limits of what is possible. There is a sweet spot here, you don't want to stretch too far that nothing ever gets done, and you don't want to stretch too little and relax for two out of the three months in the quarter. Set goals that are about 80% attainable and go for them. Often times, we stop pursuing goals when we reach them, even though we could probably go even further along our path. Make sure you are giving yourself permission to push ideas beyond what you imagined.
5. Make time to tackle the hard stuff-Set aside blocks of time each week to tackle the big ideas that will help you move forward. If you don't give yourself time to create, it will be difficult to get to the place you want to be in three years. My general advice is not to let a stretch goal go for longer than two quarters before you tackle it head on.
6. Have an accountability partner-This is so incredibly important. Having a partner, friend, sibling, co-coworker, etc. check in with you to see how you're doing can really help you move your personal strategic plan forward. Find a trusted colleague at the beginning of the process and ask them to help you stay on track.
As a reminder, this is an action based exercise-One of the biggest reasons individuals don't make changes in their career and life is that they get stuck in planning/thinking mode. I'm giving you permission to get out there and make the changes you need in order to activate your three year plan. Thanks so much for watching!
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