January 07, 2015
SMART Goals for 2015
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| Waterfall Simulation |
As the year 2014 ends and 2015 is coming, it’s best to setup goals for this New Year. Many people are going for ‘New Year Resolution’ but I think, setting up goals is better. It may take you longer to set up goals, but it’s much more fruitful. It took me a few days to make my own goals, only because I want to make it SMART. If you want to see my goals and what it looks like, read on.
What are SMART Goals
Don’t create goals just for the sake of creating them. Don't create goals that is unclear, unattainable and ridiculous. I learned about 'SMART' when I was being evaluated at work. It does make sense, gives direction and makes things quantifiable. Not only did I learned this process, I live it. SMART is an acronym for the following criteria:
S – Specific
M – Measurable
A – Attainable
R – Relevant
T – Time Bound
Wikipedia has a more detailed explanation on SMART. It's full of information. To better understand this, I'll give examples. Let's start from general goals:
- I'll take photos of people
- I'll buy a drone
- I'll do some travelling
S (Specific) – It must be clear, direct and easy to understand. It’s not general, broad or ambiguous. If you make it general, it could go both ways or 3 ways. Whereas if it's specific, then it only goes one way. Referring to the general goals above, I made some improvements respectively:
- I'll take family portraits
- I'll buy a DJI Phantom for Gopro
- I'll go to New Zealand
M (Measurable) – A professor once told me: You cannot control what you cannot measure. We must see numbers so we can measure them. This way, you know if you've done something, halfway, almost or did everything. Taking the examples above further:
- I'll take 2 family portraits in a month
- I'll buy one DJI Phantom for Gopro in February
- I'll go to New Zealand once, mid this year
A (Attainable) – It must be realistic and possible. if you're setting too high of a goal, then you'll be frustrated trying to achieve something unachievable. Yes, there are miracles, one hit wonders or lotto winners, but we're trying to be as practical and as realistic as possible.
R (Relevant) – The goal should be relevant to what you're doing. It should compliment your overall objectives as a photographer. I view myself as a fine arts, travel and landscape photographer. Since travel, fine arts and landscapes are very common subjects, there are gazillions of photos out there. At this point, I wanted to step up my game - thus I thought of a quad copter. I want to add a drone so that I can capture aerial, cinematic footage and give a different perspective to the places I visit.
T (Time Bound) – You don’t have infinite amount of time, thus it needs to be accomplished within deadline. To finish off my examples above, I add a timeline.
- I'll take 2 family portraits in a month for this year
- I'll buy one DJI Phantom for Gopro in February this 2015
- I'll go to New Zealand once in the middle of 2015
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| Rushing Confusion |
My SMART Goals
SMART goals doesn’t start SMART at first. I usually create SMART goals from general, broad, ambiguous goals that I want done. General goals give you something to start with. SMART goals ensures that you can do what you wanted to do.
In general terms, I wanted to do the following:
- Be proficient in flying a drone
- Create a video clip out of the footage I got from my drone
- Stop being lazy and do several sunrise landscape photography sessions
- Write often to increase the number of blog entries to my blog
Thus, my SMART goals are the following:
- Produce 3 video clips (focus on aerials) of 3 different locations that I’ll visit this 2015.
- Produce 2 video clips (focus on aerials) of 2 ‘people events’ (e.g. prenup, wedding) this 2015.
- Do at least 1 sunrise landscape photoshoot each month until the end of 2015.
- Create at least 4 blog entries each month until the end of this year, 2015.
Final Thoughts
Make objectives this year to improve yourself. Stop reading and start creating!
How about you? Do you have SMART goals? Have you tried creating one? Make one and share it below the comments!
How about you? Do you have SMART goals? Have you tried creating one? Make one and share it below the comments!
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| Ocean's Reclamation |