How to Set Goals: 4 Tips for Singers and Songwriters – 2019 Edition

Goals for creatives can be a challenge. Last January, I wrote a post about my goals for 2018. Since I want to be real with you and hold myself accountable, I want to go through them with you and examine my wins, fails and how 2019 will be different. 

I don’t want to just drone on about my own goals though, so we’ll be applying these to YOUR goals as well to help you hit all of your targets for 2019!

Setting Goals as a Singer/Songwriter

These steps are just guidelines, so don’t feel like you have to follow everything in my exact steps!

1). Review Last Year’s Plans

This might be tricky if you didn’t write them down (make sure you do that this year!) but let’s look at which ones I didn’t achieve and why:

2018 was tough in many ways. My grandma died, which threw my whole world upside down for a while. I broke off toxic relationships, formed and solidified new friendships, and a lot of other things that aren’t really related to my career. I would say 2018’s theme was “necessary turmoil,” because although I was not happy with a lot of what happened, the resulting growth really shaped me as a being. 

My Five goals for 2018 were: 1). Get Regular, Good Sleep (WIN), Create a Regular Warm-Up and Practice Schedule (FAIL), Release at Least 5 Original Songs (FAIL, MAYBE….I did release a lot of work with clients, so I’m not sure if that counts?), Create New Merch (WIN), and Learn About Music Publishing/Find a Publisher (FAIL). So, as you can see, I achieved maybe 2.5 out of 5 goals for 2018.

2). Decide What Goals to Keep This Year

Although I failed at my two goals in 2018, I still want to achieve them. I’m going to work toward them again this year, but I also need to analyze why I didn’t meet them last year.

My grandma can’t die twice, so that’s one way 2019 will already be better. I failed to set up a regular practice schedule because I never really had a set schedule. That is one thing I definitely want to change this year, so I will incorporate that into this year’s new goals.

The licensing fail, ugh. That project is just so overwhelming and intense that I never even got started on it. So, here’s my plan for this year:

• I hired a business coach. I’m hoping she’ll keep me on task and kick my butt when I need to get in gear.
• My new music project will be to navigate the publishing industry and get my songs licensed. 
• I’m going to operate on an actual work schedule. This will mean scheduled time off as well, because when you’re ‘always working’ it’s easy to just keep pushing things off and never get around to doing them.

3). Set New Plans Based on Previous Ones

Here are my goals for this year, based on last year’s fails and my plans this year:

1. Learn About Music Publishing and Get Music Licensed
2. Create a Regular Vocal Practice Schedule
3. Grow My Blog Traffic by at Least 30%
4. Release Way Less Cowbell on Amazon
5. Release More of My Own Original Music

You’ll notice I got more specific with #5, because last year I was too vague. Be specific with your goals! Here is a huge list on setting goals if you need help! It’s geared toward recent college grads but the info is useful to everyone.

4). Break Those Goals into Smaller Ones

Obviously, my five goals are huge and will take most of the year to achieve. I won’t bore you with the smaller goals I’ve set, but what you’ll want to do with yours is break them into smaller and smaller pieces, until you basically have a To-Do list for every day or week this year. Here is a great resource for breaking goals into smaller goals.

If you’ve made any goals this year, let me know what they are!

My goals for 2019 are: Click To Tweet

If you were successful in last year’s goals, I’d love to know what you ended up doing and how you stayed on track!

Here’s to an awesome year!