Well it's that time of year again. For the past 5 or so years, my New Year's Resolution has been to finally finish volume 1 of my comic series AER HEAD, without much result. I realize I never made a REALISTIC step-by-step plan of HOW to accomplish that goal before (for example, getting all the drawing done in one month is NOT realistic under my current schedule or any previous schedules). But now, because I've been implementing productivity techniques for various goals and projects for awhile, I think I can finally start to make more progress on AER HEAD. My strategy this year is to set super small monthly goals instead of one huge resolution.
I've also divided my goals into 2 areas: creative and non-creative. The non-creative goals are usually financially related. For example, for February, my non-creative goal is to get all my taxes done before the end of the month, while my creative goal is to write the over-arching outline of the whole AER HEAD series.
When setting these small monthly goals, it's important to seriously take into consideration how much time you can devote to each goal each week, which is something I didn't do in the past. I've set in my calendar 4 hours a week, from 11pm-midnight M-Th, to work on these goals. I'll alternate M/W creative goals and Tu/Th non-creative goals. This leaves me with 8 hours per month to devote to my creative goal, and 8 hours for the non-creative goal. With my teaching hours and freelance projects, this is a reasonable time I can dedicate. If my schedule changes, I can add more time, but this is doable for now.
I also realize that even at taking 8 hours to draw one page, it will take 2 years to finish just the drawing portion of AER, but hell that's more than what I'm doing with it right now. I've made a road map for myself, and it's OK to deviate from it, but I have to have a concrete place to start. I've planned up until June, but no farther because life changes and I'm always adjusting plans accordingly. And that's OK. Give yourself the freedom to be flexible with your goals. I'm also curious about some of YOUR goals too! Would you like to share any of your creative or non-creative goals?
