Goal Setting: When You Fail

This is the final post in the Goal Setting Series.

Notice the title doesn’t say IF you fail, it says WHEN. Why the pessimism? Because life is entirely unpredictable.  Just remember failure is subjective. You can fail to meet your deadline, but still complete the goal.  You can finish half of the goal but you still accomplished something.  You put the effort in – you get credit for that!  Put out the fires and carry on.  You still want to taste victory, don’t you?

Have I ever failed to reach a goal?  Yup.  I’m doing it right now.  One of my 2008 goals was to put out 50 new Girls Can’t WHAT? characters.  That doesn’t seem like a lot.  In my estimation, it was a minimum of one new drawing per week minus 2 weeks for “vacation”.  As of this writing, I have 27 characters completed and about 3 weeks left for the year to complete the other 23.  What to do?

Yes, I could crank out another 23 if I just concentrated on that task alone, but looking at my schedule and the client projects I have committed to for the remainder of the year tell me that just won’t happen.  Did I blow it?  Well, yes in a sense I did.  Did I over-commit?  Maybe.

So what really happened?  Essentially, I let a lot of other stuff get in the way of the time I planned to use for my art.  Not that this was a horrible thing.  It turned out that 2008 was an intense year of growth for my web design business.  Growing my web design business was a very important goal for 2008 since that pays my bills.  ;)  I don’t feel bad that one goal was sacrificed to make another one wildly successful.  It was a wonderful learning experience.

There were also a couple of events that I didn’t or couldn’t plan for.  The unexpected rebuilding of my web site was a huge time-consuming project that ate up nearly a month out of my schedule.  My macbook’s untimely repair also forced me to give up my design time for almost 2 weeks.

So will I be cutting back on my character design goal for this year?  Not on your life.  It’s still a reasonable goal and one I think I can manage in 2009.  These bumps in the road were also great learning experiences.  I have a much better handle on my web design business and I’m learning to turn down work so as not to overbook myself.  I am also aware of the challenges I faced in 2008 and I’m better prepared to work around them in 2009. I also have better backup plans in place and I’m confident I can keep working should disaster choose to rear it’s ugly head again.

Back to the present…what about the 27/50 = 54% for 2008?  Should I leave it?  Should I modify it to make myself feel better?  Hmmm…I am thinking I will go for a happy medium and change the goal to 30.  That still makes it challenging (Christmas is insanely busy for my business) and forces me to keep working towards an end result.  Trashing the goal would be a waste because I did put effort into it and dang it I want credit for that!

Isn’t that cheating?

Goal-setting is really just an exercise in best-guessing.  We cannot predict what life will throw at us.  We can only accept its challenges and adapt to the changes.  Goal setting should be done with that in mind.  It’s not cheating to realistically look at your goal sheet and your current circumstances and adapt.  If you can look yourself in the eye (I recommend a mirror for this) and know that you set reasonable goals and that you are honestly modifying them to fit changing circumstances and not because you blew them off, then by all means make the necessary adjustments.  Your goal sheet is there to motivate you, not to beat you down.  Keep that in mind when you set your initial goals and hopefully the adjustments that you do make are for the best.

Failure is just an opportunity to see what not to do next time.  Learn from your mistakes.  It takes time and patience to master anything in life.  Goal setting is not an overnight skill.  It is one where trial and error are key components to your success.  Don’t be afraid to be ambitious, but don’t be afraid to admit when you’ve screwed up and need to take appropriate action to rectify the situation.  It takes courage to make a goal-setting statement and even more courage to follow through and actually achieve it.  Whatever you do, don’t give up on your dreams!

This is the final post in the Goal Setting Series.