This past weekend I spent a good amount of time preparing for the last push of this year. It got me thinking about a number of things. Namely, the setting of goals is something I haven’t attended to as efficiently as I would have liked.
You see, a big part of this is the fact that I’ve got a song appearing on a French compilation album, today. My next post will be about this. It got me to thinking that I really need to promote my latest album and get some fans and reviews — but to what end?
That’s the point of this post, and it’s time for me to get much more serious about what the goal is, here.
Some time ago I was exposed to a marketing concept, known as SMART goals. Here is a link to Wikipedia’s definition. Those who know me know that I can’t STAND most project management/marketing types of buzzwords, because I think they are trash. No one in my experience ever made any of this tripe work, and so I tend to ignore it.
Besides, I really feel as if some of this should be innate. You have a goal; why the heck do you need to put it down according to some spreadsheet that some ‘guru’ who is likely charging a LOT of money for said spreadsheet came up with after a round of drinking? (Note: I feel the same way about ISO9001, and XML namespaces — beer had to be involved.)
Nevertheless, there are some points about SMART goals that do resonate. The key idea that I don’t think I have been good about is expressing specificity. What’s my goal? To write music is simply not specific enough IF I have something in mind. And to that end, I do. So I have decided to start tracking several items in a specific manner.
It’s time to start putting a name to the things I want, and directing my efforts to those ends.
Here are my overall goals, starting with my non-musical ones first:
* Complete, by the end of the year, my business plan draft Keynote presentation. I need to know what my company is about and what it is going to do.
* Complete, by the end of the year, two or three project plans as Keynote presentations, detailing what my software projects are about. I don’t intend to detail the implementations, but at least several bullet points indicating what my software will do, and the concept that can drive building out iterations (yes, I am an Agile developer) is required.
* Unify, or at least properly manage, my online identity(identities). I need to do this for my musical goals, listed below. It’s far too confusing, what with all the distribution points and websites available. So here is the specificity: iTunes and Amazon are my major distribution points; those need to be leveraged. I must select a streaming provider as well. Facebook, Ping, Twitter, and perhaps one other major site must serve as my outlets for information. I am currently using iLike to publish information to some of them; we shall see if I continue using it.
* Get at least 50 reviews of my album, The View To Eternity, up on both iTunes and Amazon. Shortly I will be emailing some friends with details of what I need… and I hope to generate more of a fan base. Those reviews will serve my much more long-term goal, which is below:
* Score a major motion picture. That’s what I want. That’s where I want to go with my music.
Big goals. The next thing I have to do after that is to ask people to help me meet them, and that’s a different post.
