Ep 44: The Creatives Gift Guide: Goal Setting
Transform Your Creative Goals from Dreams to Reality in 2024
SUMMARY
In this first installment of The Creatives Gift Guide series, creative coach Dustin Pead breaks down practical goal-setting frameworks specifically designed for creative professionals. Discover how to transform abstract creative aspirations into achievable goals using both SMART and CLEAR methodologies, while maintaining the flexibility that creative work demands. Learn a balanced approach to goal setting that spans nine essential life categories, ensuring your creative goals align with overall life satisfaction and professional growth.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
⚡️ The SMART framework (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) provides structure for creative goals.
⚡️ Michael Hyatt's SMARTER approach adds Exciting and Risky elements for enhanced motivation
⚡️ The CLEAR method (Collaborative, Limited, Emotional, Appreciable, Refinable) offers flexibility crucial for creative work
⚡️ Setting goals across nine life categories ensures balanced creative and personal growth
⚡️ Breaking goals into daily tasks and weekly reviews significantly increases achievement rates
⚡️ According to Dominican University research, people who set goals are 43% more likely to achieve them
NOTABLE QUOTES
💬 "Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible." - Tony Robbins (quoted in the episode)
💬 "You can do hard things. Let's make it a little bit risky." - Dustin Pead
💬 "Future you is not created in the future. It's created in the present." - Dustin Pead
💬 "It doesn't matter how big or little the progress is, as long as it's progress. Just do the next right thing." - Dustin Pead
EPISODE RESOURCES
⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome back everyone to Creativity Made Easy. I'm your host Dustin Pead. Today we're gonna start a three-week podcast series on the spirit of gift giving called the Creatives Gift Guide in which we're gonna discuss some gifts that you can begin to give your creativity to take it to the next level in 2024. And we're gonna start off with the big G goal setting.
My name is Dustin Pead, creative coach and consultant. I'm so glad that you're here today to join us. We're going to talk about this big G goal setting. I know that so many people are talking about goal setting right now, and I might just be adding to that chaos and noise, but I really hope that today's episode relieves some tension for you when you're thinking about 2024 and your creative goals.
I want to share a cool announcement about a new ebook that I put out into the metaverse about using Asana for creative teams. Now, I've gotten some feedback so far and some people are like, "Well I don't use Asana" or "I'm an individual creative and I don't have a team." Listen, this book is for any creative professional or hobbyist looking to take their creativity to the next level by organizing it and putting it into a process and system that works for them. This is not a one-size-fits-all type of thing. This is something that fits you individually and your team as well.
Let's talk about goals. How do you set goals? Are you a person that actually does set goals? If not, why not? I know they can be intimidating. I'm speaking with a couple people this week that said goals have always been super intimidating to me, and so I find it's easier not to set them and then I'm not let down. There is that little bit of "if I don't set a benchmark, then when I don't hit it, I won't be upset."
But I think goals are vastly important to getting the life and the career that you desire. You need to have something that you're striving for or else you're just kind of going with emotions and whatever comes day by day. In the words of Tony Robbins, "Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible."
And I'm a living testament this year in 2023 to tell you that that is so very true. There was also a study done by Dominican University recently that found that people who set goals are 43% more likely to achieve them. So if you have something in your mind that would be nice, if you were to just set a targeted goal towards that, then you're almost 50% more likely to achieve that goal just by setting that specific goal.
What I want to get into today is the different ways to set goals. You've probably heard these acronyms before. At least one of them you've probably heard before. There's a system out there called SMART goals. It's an acronym S.M.A.R.T., and it walks you through the things that you need to remember when you're setting goals.
If you just say "Oh, I want to be healthier in 2024," that's great, but the problem is that it's not specific, and that's the first S of SMART goals. I didn't come up with this. This has been around for a long, long time. This is just me breaking it down and explaining it to you on a short podcast form so that you can take it and start thinking about your goals for 2024 if you haven't already.
Your goals need to be SMART. The S is specific. You need to get more specific. Instead of getting healthy in 2024, "I want to lose 30 pounds by July 1st." Which takes us to the next letter M - measurable. You want these things to be measurable. You want to have some kind of a number attached to it or some sort of way that you can measure whether you actually achieved this goal. Just getting healthier, how do I know if I achieved that? But if I say I want to lose 30 pounds by July 1st, then I know that when I get to July 1st and I haven't dropped 30 pounds from what I was at the beginning of the year, then I can measure the success of that goal.
You also want them to be achievable. That's the A in SMART. Is this actually achievable? I love to play golf, but I'm not going to get out there and play as good as Tiger Woods. So a goal of becoming a PGA pro for me in 2024 is not achievable.
Also relevant - that's the R in SMART. Is that goal relevant to your current life situation and scenario? Is it something that will increase the overall well-being of your career or your livelihood or your personal life or your spiritual life or your financial life in the situation that you're in right now?
And the last letter of SMART is T, and that means time-bound. Taking it back to my original illustration of losing 30 pounds by July 1st, that's time-bound, it's locked in. July 1st is when I'm going to achieve this goal. I recommend that your goals are spread throughout the year. Many people recommend this, and I'm not the first one to recommend it, I'm just passing along what I've learned. If you have goals that are spread throughout the year as far as being due, we talk about DUE dates and DO dates. If you have certain goals that are DUE at certain times of the year, then you're more likely to hit them rather than all of your goals being due on December 31st.
Now, Michael Hyatt, who I talked about last week on the podcast in our episode on how full focus can change the game for you, would take SMART goals and add two letters to the end of that, turning them from just SMART to SMARTER goals. He would add the E and the R at the end of SMART goals. The E would be, make sure that your goals are exciting. Make sure it's something that you can actually get excited about, cause if you're not excited about it, you're probably not going to pursue it with much gusto. And I would even say make sure that the end goal is what's exciting, not the process. Usually the process to achieve a goal isn't all that exciting, but the end goal is what needs to be exciting.
And the last thing he would say with the extra two letters on SMART goals is that the R here is that you need to have it be a little bit risky. Have it be a little bit risky. Don't make it too easy on yourself. Make it something that's a little bit hard to achieve. Yes, we want to make it achievable, but we don't want to make it so easy that it's like "I want to wake up by noon one day a week." You can do hard things, and so let's make it a little bit risky.
There's another acronym that I came across earlier this year when it comes to setting goals that I really love. I haven't dug too deep into it yet, but I am fascinated by the concept. It's called CLEAR goals. I love that acronym just right out the gate because it's one that I want to embody, I want my goals to be super clear.
The C stands for collaborative - this is a type of goal that encourages teams to work together collaboratively. You're not going to get this goal on your own. You're going to bring other people in, whether it's your team, your friends, your family, your coaches, your mentors, your mentees, whoever it may be.
The L here is very similar to time-bound, but it's limited. You're gonna limit the duration of time. The next one is emotional, which you kind of hit a little bit with Michael Hyatt's SMARTER on the E where he says make it exciting. But I like it, it takes it one step further - make it emotional, makes it personal. It's something that brings out some sense of emotion in you.
Now, the next one is appreciable. This is obviously like a more financial term, right, are your assets appreciating in value or depreciating in value? What they say here is that you want to break down your goals so that you can accomplish them quicker. It's kind of that snowball effect. If you ever heard Dave Ramsey talk about the debt snowball, how you want to tackle your smallest amount of debt first and then your next largest and then your next largest and you keep rolling it over.
The last thing in CLEAR goals is the R and that's refinable. You're setting a clear objective, but you're being flexible with the situation as new information changes the goal. You can embrace, refine, and modify the goals. This is not an excuse to bow out - you're not gonna get two weeks into January and say "well, you know what, I wasn't really feeling it anyway." But you're gonna say, "You know what, situations change. My job situation changed. We added a family member who lives in our home now. We have taken on new debt. We have new financial freedom that we weren't planning on." Things happen, things change, life is going to happen.
Here's something that I wish someone had told me a long time ago about setting goals. You need to consider some well-rounded categories. I love the Full Focus planner so much because Michael Hyatt encourages you to consider these different life aspects when you're considering your goals, so that all your goals aren't just work-centric or just hobby-centric or just money-centric.
Here's what I recommend before we end today's episode. No matter what categories you choose, no matter what acronym you may or may not use to come up with your goals, I highly encourage you to find a system that works for you that breaks these goals down into weekly or daily tasks that inches you closer to the goal with regularity.
Remember, you don't need to get obsessed about the thing that's way out in front of you for three to 12 months from now. You need to just know that the next right thing is what you need to do. Break it down into chunks, the appreciable part that we talked about in CLEAR goals. Break that down into little bitty chunks that you can make progress on one day at a time.
It doesn't matter how big or little the progress is, as long as it's progress. Just do the next right thing, make that progress, check it off. Then do the next right thing, accomplish it. And if you do those bite-sized chunks all throughout the year, or throughout the time length of your goal, you're going to look up one day and realize you're way closer to your goal than you ever thought possible.
I cannot wait to continue this series with you next week. We're going to continue the Creative Gift Guide series by talking about 12-month rhythms. It's a really big picture framework that I think will set your new year into a whole new level of expectation and a whole new level of accomplishment.
I cannot wait to talk to you about that. Check out the ebook at DustinPead.com/store. Preorder that now before December 14th. You'll get 50% off. It's only $5 and it'll help you, your team, or maybe even somebody you know that needs it going into 2024. You can give that to them as well.
I cannot wait to talk to you next time on the Creativity Made Easy podcast.