Hey! Hope you’re doing well! This is my first article this year, and it will be a little different. January is usually the time when you reflect on the past twelve months and look into the future. So this time we’ll be talking about setting up goals and achieveing them in the upcoming year.
You may remember from my Dribbble success story that I’m one of those people who make New Year resolutions. People often laugh and don’t take us seriously. Frankly, they have a point — every January gyms all over the globe are packed, and then dead empty on February. It seems that people make New Year resolutions just to break them. People in general are lazy, and if you want to achieve something, you need to fight your laziness every single day.
I want to believe that I’m a person who can control his life, make conscious decisions and follow through on them. I’m not saying that I complete all my resolutions, but defining them definitely helps me to turn my career and life to the wanted direction. You could never reach your destination if you don’t know where you are going, right?
So this year instead of being lazy and making fake promises to yourself, let’s build a system that will help you reach your goals! Here are a few simple rules that keep me motivated in pursuing my goals:
Write your resolutions down!
One of the most important things is to write down your resolutions (preferably by hand) and put this list where you can see it every single day. If you keep the resolutions in your mind, you’ll forget them over the first week or two. However, if you make a list of resolutions but put it in the bottom drawer, you’ll probably find it next year when doing the same thing. Believe me, there is nothing more devastating than finding your New Year resolutions a couple of years later, written down on the scrapped paper, and seeing that you didn’t achieve any of your goals. I’ve been there!
Make your resolutions as specific as possible
“I’ll do more sports!” – this is the example of a terrible New Year resolution. It’s doomed to fail.
“I will be able to run 5 miles by the end of April, and will run at least one marathon this year” – is much better! This way you will know exactly what to do to reach your goal. And at the end of the year you will know if you’ve made it.
Set different milestones for the same goal
For example, I tend to set pessimistic, real and optimistic milestones. This way the final goal seems closer. The pessimistic goal is more reachable than the optimistic, but once you’ve reached it, you have an extra boost of confidence to go further and conquer higher goals!
Have a roadmap
This is another really important thing. What needs to be done on the way towards your goal? Put a roadmap together for every goal you have to know exactly what you can start doing right now to get closer to the end goal.
Go public!
Tell your mom, tell your friends, tell everybody you know about the resolution you are making. It would make it much harder to fail on your resolution and let everybody know how much of a quitter you are. You will feel responsible and obliged, and will be less likely to give up on your goals.
Prioritize your goals
There is a huge chance that you won’t achieve all of your goals. It’s okay. But you need to make sure you achive the most important ones. To do so, you should prioritize the goals in your list. Put the “it would be nice to achieve this” goals at the end of the list.
Work on the things that matter!
These are just a few very simple things but they really help achieve my goals, and I believe they can help you too!
And of course I’ll take my own medicine and share some of my goals for the upcoming year publicly with all of you. I won’t be sharing my roadmaps and pessimistic/optimistic milestones, I still have to put a lot more work into the roadmaps and do some calculations before I could share those. But I will show you my general goals instead. So here we go!
1. Keep my audience growing.
During these last years Dribbble has changed my life so much I don’t want to stop. I want to keep building up my audience, and not only on Dribbble. Last month I posted my first Behance project, and the feedback I’ve received so far is really awesome! Also, I have a lot of fun publishing works on my Instagram. I’m hoping to increase my audience significantly over the next year!
2. Launch a serious, value-packed course.
Throughout last years I’ve discovered the joy of teaching. And I still have a lot to share! So this year I’ll put even more work into my blog and email list. Also, in 2016 I’m planning to launch at least one valuable course. Ironically enough, my first course probably won’t be on icon design, though I haven’t decided yet.
3. Finally launch physical products.
I’ve always dreamed about having my own little shop with actual physical things being sold there. I believe this year has to be the year I’ll finally make it a reality.
4. One super secret side project.
I know I should be focused on icon design. But I have so many ideas in my head! One in particular is driving me nuts. It must be done during the this year simply so that I can finally clear my head from it. It’s kinda icon related too, so hopefully you’ll hear more about it soon.
So this is it. These are a few of my goals for 2016. I will set the alarm to the next December to see if I succeed. Hopefully, I will be able to cross all of them off my resolution list. And I hope you will achieve all of yours, too! Go and make your to-achieve list right now, stick to it and be the master of your own fate!
And now – Lets get to work! Stay awesome!
