Goal Setting

Goal setting can be seen an important and useful when it comes to the life of a freelance musician. By setting goals you will be able to plan ahead with milestones until you reach your ultimate goal, whether that’s wanting to own your own recording studio or being a world renowned musician. At the end of the day it is an overall plan to how you want your career to develop.

Some of you may be familiar with a Career Development Plan already, but it is basically a form where you can plan your self-development and skills & Knowledge for the next 10 years of your career. I like to set it out as if you’re climbing a mountain; which route is going to take you to the summit the fastest?

  

This is just a rough sketch on what you could do and where to put your goals. For a famous musician your first goal could be to play at a venue to more than 100 people, and your second could be to release an EP. You could see it as a musical bucket list but with working towards a main goal.

However this could become quite stressful for you, especially if your targets are related to a certain time period. If one of your targets for the end of the year is to write an album and you’re getting writers block, this could either motivate you to try harder or make you lose motivation all together and give up on the whole concept of a Career Development Plan.

Also throughout your career you might suddenly want to change your main goal, or maybe all the goals before that one as well. Nothing is stopping you from branching away from your original plan. For example, you might start off with wanting to be a session musician but then realise that you’d rather go into teaching music instead.

It is important to have at least one way to set your goals out on paper. As I said earlier, it will definitely motivate you to keep going and you can also see how much closer to the summit of the mountain you’re getting. And before you know it you’ll be standing on the top looking back at all the hard work you put into getting there -  and you’ll be thankful.