Creative People’s Goals

I’d been talking to a novelist and asked her what she was up to. She said, “In the next three years I want to accomplish five things. First I will …Then … And also …” Was I impressed. She was clear and confident about her goals and I was shocked because many writers, like many artists, dancers, actors, composers, and other creative people don’t give their goals enough thought. So much so that I can just hear them thinking right now, “Oh, this post is going to be about goals—that kind of stuff. So I’ll read something else.” Big mistake.

In the business world goals are talked about all the time. Everyone who works in an organization has goals. But many creators have an aversion to goals that mystifies me. And they invent phony-baloney excuses for not pursuing them such as: “Creative people don’t need goals; they’re too spontaneous,” “I don’t see the value,” “I’ve never been able to stick to goals,” “I don’t have time for that,” and so on.

But the creator’s ever-active, never-resting mind—your mind, my mind–is confused when it doesn’t know what to do—when it doesn’t have clear, specific, empowering goals. (Be sure the goals are specific; general goals are meaningless.) The last thing a creative person needs is a muddled brain. So the mind’s greatest burden is to decide very clearly what must be done. When you discover what you must accomplish—today, in a year, in five–uncertainties disappear and you become productive. And productivity—the production of fine works one after another for the whole length of a successful career—is the main goal of creative people. Productivity is what all their routines and rituals are aimed at.

Many creative people don’t realize that usually the best in a field is also the most prolific. Except those who produce very little, but everything they do produce is perfect and hasn’t a single flaw.

Think Hard

Think hard about your creative goals because the more thought and the more intense the thought you give to shaping, reshaping, and fleshing them out, the  clearer and more specific they’ll become and the more strongly you’ll be committed to achieving them. That’s not just my opinion. It’s an indisputable fact.

The more intense you are about reaching your goals, and the more you talk about them with family, friends, and other creators and teachers and mentors the more likely you are to overcome obstacles and persevere and reach them. Simply stating a goal to another person–saying as that novelist said to me, “Here is what I’m going to accomplish”–increases the likelihood that you’ll accomplish it.

Then you feel a sudden zest, a tingle. Your imagination catches fire.  You’re filled with optimism. Then you’re confident, and bear in mind that in every field on earth without exception–especially in the arts–more people fail because they lack confidence than fail because they lack talent.

It is confidence and not talent that’s the secret of most successful people’s success. Confident creators are rarer than talented creators. I take for granted that you’re talented. You wouldn’t have gone into acting, writing, painting, etc. in the first place if you weren’t talented. But if you have faith in yourself you’ll reach higher levels of success than other creators of equal talent who lack that faith in themselves. Think about that. Read that sentence again. You must never for more than five minutes lose confidence. Whenever you feel your confidence seeping away say, “Hey, enough of that.”

When your goals are highly charged  and you’re committed to them heart and soul, there’s hardly an obstacle that you can’t overcome—big obstacles, small obstacles, old obstacles, and new obstacles—no obstacle out in the world, and no obstacle in you. Then you have both tremendous power and clear direction.

Run Through the Tape

The majority of artists and writers, like the majority of all other people, relax when the completion of a task or the achievement of a goal—even the goal of happiness–is within reach. Is it laziness or weariness or over-confidence or burnout or because the pressure is off? There are theories, but no one has been able to adequately explain why. Many athletes relax in the vicinity of victory, and entire armies do too. And many individuals, athletes, armies, writers and other artists just plain give up and quit.

Particularly when a long time is necessary to achieve a goal, you may become exhausted and disheartened. It’s only then, when you feel you’ve given everything that should reasonably be asked of a person and can’t go any further, yet continue bravely on nevertheless, that you show your true worth.

The best-trained track men and women don’t run to the tape, they run through it. They race to an imaginary finish line a few feet farther than the actual one. It’s that imaginary line they are racing to reach. There’s a tendency in many people not only to relax when they’re approaching their goals, but also when they’ve reached them. I know a man who had been trying to get a book published for years without success, but lost all ambition once he was told it was to be published.

We have to learn to pour it on and run through the tape and pursue our goals with unwavering, powerful commitment, striving much harder, not less hard, the closer we get to reaching them. Tell yourself, “Run through the tape. Run through the tape.”  When your friend Kate or Jack or Milly or Bill is easing up tell them, “Run through the tape. That’s the only way you’ll succeed.”

Stick like Glue

Stick to your creator’s goals like glue. Never let a gap open between you and them. Many people fail to reach their potential because they let too much distance open up. Or they let too much time elapse and lose momentum. Or they lose focus, frittering their days and years away as if they have an unlimited supply of them.

Whatever creative success is for you, attach yourself to it. Where it goes, you go. Always be gaining ground on your goals, your dreams. Never fall back. Never get so caught up in the B.S. of daily life that you forget all that your craft means to you. The creator’s life is the best life—you know that. If you’ve gotten sidetracked, straighten up and set out again with determination and courage. Fear nothing.  If you need to make changes, make them, sacrificing this, sacrificing that—they were mere impediments. Constantly remind yourself of your goals. Then stick to them like superglue.

© 2016 David J. Rogers

Parts of this post are based on material from my book Fighting to Win: Samurai Techniques for Your Work and Life.

For my interview from the international teleconference with Ben Dean about Fighting to Win, click on the following link:

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