1. Make your goal something in the middle.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of setting a goal that is either too big or too small. For instance, your creative goal might be “to do lots more art”. Not only is that goal far too vague, the sheer size of it will probably have overwhelmed you by about the middle of March. On the other hand, if you set too small and specific a goal such as “to practise drawing daffodils”, you’ll probably get bored pretty quickly. It’s better to aim for something in the middle which is not too hard but not too soft either. You’ll need to stretch yourself to reach your goal but it should still be achievable for you.

2. Think about the process to find a way in.

Setting a “process” goal rather than a “project” goal is not just a great way of getting started but can also be really helpful when it comes to keeping going with your goal once that initial burst of enthusiasm has waned. A process goal focuses on how you’ll achieve your goal rather than what you will achieve. You don’t even need to have a specific project in mind. You can start by just incorporating something into your daily or weekly routine. For instance, to try and achieve that goal of doing lots more art, you could just set aside a specific period of time on a regular basis to do some art journaling and see where that takes you.

3. KISS – Keep It Simple Stupid.

I’m no neuroscientist but I do know that the way our brains work is to try and protect us from the modern equivalent of saber-toothed tigers getting too close to our cave. It will do all it can to shield us from overwhelming or stressful situations, so when it comes to goal setting, keeping things simple is the way forward. For example, if you’ve decided that the best time for you to do that art journaling is every Monday evening when your Other Half is at netball practice, then it becomes really clear to your brain when you’ve hit or missed that target. This significantly reduces the cognitive effort you have to put in to achieve your overall goal and also helps build a reliable routine.

4. Work out what gets in your way.

It sounds counter-productive to start your goal setting process by thinking about all the things that might get in the way of achieving it but this can be surprisingly helpful. However, it only works if you also spend time thinking about how you can manage those obstacles more effectively. How will you organise your time, workspace, equipment, energy levels, commitments, interruptions, distractions etc so that they don’t throw you off course completely? It helps to write a list of all the things you’ve thought of and then come up with some specific solutions. Develop as many potential solutions as you can and then test them out to see which ones work best for you.

5. Take it one step at a time.

Remember me saying that our brains are wired to protect us from those saber-toothed tigers? Well, if those tigers are too big and we feel threatened or overwhelmed by them, then it’s normal for our brains to go into “fight or flight” mode. If we translate that to goal-setting, then choosing a goal that seems too big or scary makes us feel that we can’t even start on a project, let alone finish it. To prevent this happening, approaching a goal one step at a time makes it much less threatening to our brains. For instance, if your goal is to make a paper sculpture of the Eiffel Tower, you could start by sourcing paper, looking at images of the Tower online, working out scaling etc and ticking the steps off every time you complete one.

I do hope that this advice has gone some way to helping you keep motivated for whatever creative project you are hoping to achieve this year. Good luck and do let me know how you get on.

Take care.

Melissa x