Should you bother to set Goals for 2018?

It’s that time of year again. That time when experts, brainiacs, eggheads, and bloggers all exhort you to set goals for the coming year.  They delineate the process and give away worksheets.  They remind you that 5000% of people who write their goals down achieve them and that 3756% of people never even set a goal*. 

In other words, they nag you and sort of bully you into generating a set of goals. I start to feel like it is nearly immoral to not set goals.  And I know - because I have done the same thing to you in the past!  And to myself. Well – not this year! 

It is January and the beginning of a new year. It is a time many reflect on the previous year and our progress as humans to date.  And it is nearly a habit to expect to generate some goals. And those goals better meet all the criteria of good, achievable goals. 

But should you bother to go through goal setting for 2018?

There’s a reason only 3% of people even bother to write their goals down**.  It clearly is a strategy that doesn’t work for most people.  It requires a level of commitment difficult to bring to just about any activity, except perhaps a quest.  And since many of us play for our enjoyment (and even for those who play for a living) – it becomes just one more thing to do (and therefore it becomes easy to ditch!).

So, if goal setting isn't the right approach, what better ways could you use to identify what you’d like to do with your harp this year and check-in over time to see if you are getting there? If the standard goal setting hasn't worked for you, here are three other ways to approach this:

1. Keep a diary. Yes, this is a thinly disguised journal – but for some reason a diary is slightly less threatening than a journal (just look at Instagram or Pinterest – loads of journals not too many diaries).  You can keep a diary in any medium and it really is just you talking to you.  You can do this in the blocks of your planner calendar, in a separate book, on scraps of napkins – whatever fits in your day.  The best thing – who gets you better than you?  It gives you a place to pour out your frustration when you are having a hard time – and to capture your glee when something totally comes together.  
2. Make an “I Love Me” board.  I started out thinking that a Vision Board was a great idea but it comes with so much baggage. And of course, it is hard to find magazines with pictures of harps (except Folk Harp Journal, Harp Column, and AHS Journal – and who wants to cut those up?!***).  But you can capture all you want to do in the future and what you accomplish as sort of a visual scrapbook.  It can have photos and selfies, invitations, programs, contracts, etc.  Capture and display the detritus of your successes as well as any artifacts that arise from frustration (sheet music so marked up that it is unreadable? string bits?). Be sure to put the board somewhere that you can see it – and see that you are definitely moving.
3. Make a record. I like to encourage students to do this at Christmas time and spontaneously (or maybe not so spontaneously) throughout the year.  Christmas is a trove of tunes you play every year, so it is easy to effortlessly hear your progress. But you should also include any other tunes you’ve worked on.  You could make what is an audio diary and after playing the tune you could comment to yourself – how much easier it was to play the tune this year, how much you want to add tunes, how good you feel about something you’ve worked on for a while.  You could do this more regularly (as a version of 1 above) but I kind of like the idea of a different means of reminding myself what I’m doing.

Or just write your goals down.  There’s nothing wrong with writing them down, keeping a practice journal and actively looking for progress and successes.  The key is to capture evidence of your journey in a way that helps you travel!  Let me know if you're going to bother to set goals or how you might watch your own growth over the coming 12 months!

* these statistics may be randomly generated (i.e. made up)

** actual statistic snagged from this article – you’ll find various numbers in assorted sources, but they are all low

*** if you're not already reading at least one of these, you might want to consider adding it to your readying list