A lifetime ago I was a recruiter in the Air Force. At the end of every year in December we had to open up our yearly planner and write down all of our objectives for the next year, month by month. Although this was a tedious task it did help make sure I had a plan to follow for accomplishing our mission. When I came to San Angelo and focused my attention on opening a gallery and eventually developing an art career, I used the same methodology to create a yearly plan to accomplish my own mission.
Whether you’re a hobby artist or developing your career in the arts this will serve you well to make sure you are focused on accomplishing goals you’ve set for yourself. Here are five essential steps for building out your yearly calendar.
Write down 3-4 year long goals - It’s important to start with an idea of what you want to accomplish by the end of the year. You can’t make a plan unless you know where you’re headed. Along the way you will accomplish these goals sooner or perhaps a little later in the year. This depends on the complexity of the goals and what is required to achieve them. Use the SMART system for setting up these goals. Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timebound.
You can’t make a plan unless you know where you’re headed.
2. Divide up by quarters - It’s important to dial down the plan from the broader year to the quarter level and then to individual months. There are four quarters in a year, starting with quarter one, January - March. In the first few months make note of important local events as well as holidays, these can have an impact on your objectives especially if your plan is to sell more art. But maybe your goal is to develop a website or social media channel. What do you need to achieve by the end of Q1 to make sure you’re on track? Do the same thing for each quarter that follows.
3. Look at each month - Now that you have some broad objectives for each quarter it’s time to look at each month and make sure you are consistent with your activities and that you are reserving time to get them done. Meaning you should also be careful with overcommitting to other projects that are not aligned with your goals for the quarter and the year. Look at the month by week and determine when it is best to schedule certain activities. Make it work around the schedule you already have, not the other way around.
A plan is never a failure unless you allow it to run off course by not monitoring it.
4. Check in - It’s important to check in regularly to measure your progress as well as make adjustments to your plan depending on the results. You may need to change course or make improvements to your plan. Either way you need to monitor progress. Did you run into any unforeseen obstacles? A plan is never a failure unless you allow it to run off course by not monitoring it. I usually check in at the end of the month and review my activities.
5. DOCUMENT! - If I had to emphasize one step here, it’s DOCUMENTATION. If you didn’t write it down then it didn’t happen! This is the only way for you to not only see the plan and know what needs to be done but it’s also the only way you will understand the nuances of the plan as well as how it changes overtime based on your own influence on it. I’ve never had a plan that went exactly as I wrote it, but it always learned a lot and that eventually allowed me to approach it differently. Get yourself a planner, preferably one that teachers use. They have to develop a very similar plan for curriculum and the formatting is incredibly useful.
I’ve kept the broad strokes of this method and thrown out the rest. Everyone has their own way that will develop from executing on their yearly plan. But the important thing is to do it now that you have a little break. The end of the year is a great time to reflect on the accomplishments of the past and dream about what we want to place in our path for the coming year.