As a musician, it’s important to set goals for your career and create a plan to make them happen. From learning new skills and getting more followers to earning more money and booking more gigs, setting clear goals is the key to seeing your dreams come to life. Here’s how to set better goals for the new year…
Let’s talk S.M.A.R.T.
When it comes to goal setting, many pros around the world use the S.M.A.R.T method. Created in 1981 by George T. Doran, S.M.A.R.T is an acronym that helps you create specific criteria for your goals to help improve the chances of their success.
What does it stand for?
S – Specific
M – Measurable
A – Achievable
R – Realistic
T – Timed
How to use the S.M.A.R.T Method:
When it comes to your music career, your goals need to be realistic and specific. You should be able to quantifiably measure their success. For them to be achievable for you as an artist, you need to be able give it a set time period for it to be accomplished by.
🧠 Pro Tip: Always write down your goals. — Once they’re written down, you can look back at them whenever you start to feel lost and get right back on track.
Just so we’re clear, despite the comments that setting your high-level goals can be a pretty casual process, they are your music career goals and you need to take them seriously. You’ll need to work on them throughout the year if you want your career to move forward. If you don’t work on them consistently, you won’t hit your goals, and that would be a shame.
Setting goals helps us to figure out what we really want and don’t want by showing us what we’re truly passionate about. Sometimes we set goals that might be aiming for something we think we want, when in actual fact we want (or need) something different. By constantly reassessing ourselves and our goals, we are able to determine what we are truly enthusiastic about, encouraging us to work harder for it. Goals can be anything; buying new equipment, sitting for an exam, hosting your own event, learning a new instrument… Your options are limitless.
