How many of us have projects around our homes that we know we need to do and tell ourselves some day I’ll get to that. Months, maybe years later the project still isn’t done. No judgement here. Just reality.
My husband and I had an old vehicle sitting in our driveway for nearly nine months. At first we drove it a few times, and then it sat so long that the battery died. We kept talking about our need to drive it, but nothing ever happened. At seven months we tried to jump start it. No go. At eight months my husband bought a big charger at the local hardware store. It worked the first time we used it, but when we tried to restart the car after we drove it, it was dead again. At nine months we learned a friend was coming to town and would need a vehicle to drive for two weeks. I told my friend she could drive our car. Another friend took a look at the vehicle and told us he could put a new battery in it. Then we took it to the shop because the brakes were sticking from sitting too long. Today we dropped the car off for our friend. It’s brakes are good and it has a brand new battery. The moral of this story: deadlines are our friends!
We wanted to get the car running, but it just wasn’t a priority. Our friend’s need was the perfect motivation to get the vehicle serviced and working properly.
So how does this apply to the studio? I use goal setting in my studio to push myself forward.
I had set a goal in my studio to finish designing a new large composition by the end of September. I was only two-thirds done. Deadline not met, but the deadline still served a significant purpose. As Robert Browning the poet wrote “Ah but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a Heaven for?” I have pinned to my studio wall another quote similar to Brownings’ poetic line. “It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but a some more ambitious goal beyond it.” — Arnold Toynbee
The deadline I set for myself was ambitious, but obtainable if all went according to plan. But life seldom goes according to plan. Life was interrupted by unexpected events, some quite fun. So I set a new goal of finishing by the end of October. But the last week I have been too sick to work. I only have about 15% left. I still dream of finishing by the end of the month. It will be a stretch, but if I don’t challenge myself, who will?
What kind of goals do you set for yourself? How do you challenge yourself to keep improving and moving forward? When you miss a goal what do you do?
