In a burst of optimism and confidence I jot down my goals for the year including art career goals. But how do I know that the notebook won't go back on a shelf to be discovered at some later date when the info is useless to me? Well I still have the sneaking suspicion that just the act of writing down your goals is a great step no matter what you do next but let's make the most of that crazy art career goal list shall we?

1. Review the list regularly and keep track of the actions you are taking toward your goals.

I have a notebook where I keep track of financial activity from month to month - before you get any ideas about how amazingly organized I am let me say that this notebook is a train wreck : ) I quickly scribble notes in there to be pieced together later - like when it's time to do my taxes. 

I look at this notebook often so this is where I put my goals. I rewrite the goals at the beginning of each month just to keep them present in my mind. For example if one of my goals is to sell 50 miniature paintings I will rewrite that goal minus the amount of miniature artworks I sold the previous month. 

2. Measure your progress. Measure goals against each other. 

If you have a goal to increase your social media interaction/following then it is really important to write down the baseline number before you start on this goal so that you have a solid number to measure your progress against. Also you can compare how many Facebook followers you gain in one month to Twitter followers. These type of comparisons will affect the way you are analyzing the information, "Why did I get 6 new Twitter followers in comparison to 1 new Facebook follower last month?" You might start to analyze how you are using each of these social media differently. One thing that I noticed was that when I posted photos of groups of paintings instead of individual pieces of artwork I got a great response and people tended to send inquiries about prices etcetera at this time. They also left more comments on these images which causes them Facebook to deem the content more relevent and show my content to more people which helped me gain more followers.

3. Celebrate and share the successes in your art career. Share your good news with your friends and fans when you sell your an artwork or reach a certain number of Facebook followers for example. If you don't celebrate your successes then it can be hard to enjoy the process of acheiving your goals and then this practice won't become habitual. The more habitual you can make the process of staying on track with your art career the easier it will become.

Don't lose site of your goals!

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