Refocused Living

I’m the type of person who’s always working on several large scale projects at once. One of the things I’ve discovered is that when I think of my goals in terms of deadlines instead of goals, I often achieve better results in a quicker amount of time. And when you’re dealing with several massive projects at once, this translates into a huge time saver.

It sounds like a weird, half-semantics quibble, right? A “deadline” vs. a “goal”? Why does the word choice matter? To me, the word choice (and as an extension, the word meanings) make all of the difference. I like to think of a deadline as a goal that cannot be changed – a deadline is something more finalized, a goal is still an aspiration up in the air. Turning a goal into a deadline can be used to motivate you to take action. Let’s get into a little deeper detail.

We all know what a goal is. A goal is something that you’re working towards – a final product, a finished masterpiece. But because of the nature of the word “goal,” we think of goals as being more lofty and something that isn’t exactly concrete. And the word “goal” is so vague, as well; the word “goal” can be stretched to apply to nearly anything. Visiting the South Pole can be a world traveler’s goal, but a college student’s sole goal in life might be to make it through a week’s worth of classes without feeling burnt out.

A deadline, however, isn’t lofty. It’s specific. A deadline is a deadline – a dead line. When something is dead, it’s absolutely dead. Its status will be forever unchanging: no longer alive, no longer up for discussion. A line is something that’s concrete; a line is immovable, it’s as clear as black and white. A deadline, therefore, is something that’s forever unchanging – a line that cannot be crossed under any circumstance.

We often think of “deadlines” in various ways, so I’ll do a little bit of clarifying. Here are a few different types of deadlines, with definitions:

• Daily deadlines. Things that you can reasonably expect to be done by the end of the day. An example of a daily deadline would be writing up a new blog post for your personal development blog.
• Weekly deadlines. Things that you can reasonably expect to be done by the end of the week, sometimes sooner (possibly within the time frame of three to six days.) An example of a weekly deadline would be creating a series of five blog posts on a topic you’re passionate about.
• Biweekly deadlines. Things that you can reasonably expect to be done within a time frame of two weeks. These deadlines generally have a bit more depth than a weekly deadline. You might be able to accomplish a good chunk of a two week project within a week, but that extra time you give yourself could be the difference between “good” and “outstanding.”

I hesitate to go any farther than biweekly, because monthly deadlines more or less fall along the lines of goals and goal setting. Things that take a month or longer can  be broken down into daily, weekly, and biweekly deadlines.

I know what you’re thinking at this point. “You just defined what goals are and instead swapped the word ‘deadline’ for the word ‘goal.’ How is this any different?!”

It’s different because it makes me feel different. It should make you feel different, too.

You could have a goal that you need to walk for 30 minutes a day. That’s a fabulous goal, on the outside. But what if instead of referring to your walk as a goal, you referred to it as a deadline? Think about how you would phrase that deadline – “The deadline for walking 30 minutes must be done by 6:00 PM CST today, no exceptions.” Now you created a sense of drive and need solely with your words. With no choice but to either complete your objective or fail, you’re much more likely to be motivated to take concrete action.

Deadlines pick up where goals leave off. Goals may be what you wish your future to be like, but deadlines transform those goals into realistic action steps. How will you ever expect to achieve your goals if you don’t complete the deadlines you set for yourself?

* * * * *

A deadline is like a goal that’s cast in stone. How different would your life be if you thought of goals being as unchanging deadlines instead of wishes and dreams you aspire towards?

Practical application: Pick one goal that you’ve been mulling over that you want to accomplish. Choose an aspect of that goal to work on, and set daily, weekly, and biweekly deadlines for accomplishment. Be crystal clear with your planning and deadlines, and work towards competing those objectives, no matter what.

A major issue for lots of creative people is the process of creating enough work to make an impact in their careers. More specifically, creative people seem to have a problem with sharing their own work out in public. This can be attributed to a lot of things – for example:, perfectionism, the feeling of inadequacy (e.g., “this work will never be good enough to show others”), or thoughts of being able to immediately create another work that’s even better than the the work just made.

But you know what? All of those crippling excuses for not sharing your creative works don’t matter. As soon as you come up with something creative, you need to put it out there ASAP. If you look throughout history, every single success story in any artistic field has tales of flops and tales of successes. But what defines those successful people from others is the fact that they kept trying again and again and again. If one thing they tried wasn’t successful, they immediately moved on to something else. Let’s look at a few examples.

Mozart was an incredibly prolific composer . He only composed a little over 30 years, but he wrote over 600 sets of pieces by the time he died at age 36. Starting when he was about 5 years old and ending literally on his deathbed, he never stopped the process of creating new artistic works.

The odd thing in Mozart’s story is that he only composed works purely for higher. He couldn’t sit around and wait for divine inspiration to strike at the perfect moment. No new compositions meant no money on the table; no money on the table meant he couldn’t support himself or his family. But even without sitting around waiting for a spark of creativity, he still managed to continuously compose and expand his accomplishments, creating beautiful masterpieces along the way.

If you go through Mozart’s catalog of works, you’ll see that most of his stuff isn’t even performed today. The first 200 to 300 works are pretty average, with some exceptions of course, but it didn’t stop him from composing the next piece. Even if one of his works failed miserably, it was still a brand new work to share with others. People kept hiring Mozart because they appreciated his compositions and admired his skills. Mozart never, ever took a break or quit; he worked nonstop on becoming an even better composer until the end of his life.

The best artists, the best writers, the best actors, the best directors, the best artistic people in the world are obsessed with continuously creating and throwing their new works into the hands of the public. If a new song or a new movie is a flop, so what? There’s always next time. They learn the lesson from the failure and move on.

Lady GaGa has been touring on almost a constant basis since early 2008, and now she’s selling out stadiums. Liberace started performing in restaurants when he was about 22 years old and didn’t stop until he was forced to due to extreme sickness, in his mid 60s; by that time, he was selling out Radio City year after year. Madonna constantly revives her career by sharply turning down different roads every single year, never halting to take a break. When she finishes recording a brand new record, there’s promotions and a tour to be done. When the tour is wrapped up, she undertakes another creative project almost immediately.

Great actors never stop honing their craft. A new role is always available for them to take on. Directors continuously direct.

The bottom line is that any famous person in any field, any success story, will have a long list of works behind their names. They might not be perfect works. They might not be works that people will look at in 20 years and think they were anything special. But to these people, it doesn’t matter – it’s a process of growing, of reinvention. It’s a story of becoming successful not right out of the box, but because they truly believed in their creative talent and did everything in their power to get that talent in the hands of other people.

Not every sonnet that Shakespeare wrote was a literary masterpiece. Not every piano piece Chopin composed will enter someone’s piano repertoire. Not every piece of art that Picasso painted was considered among his best.

Getting your work out there isn’t sitting on a completed work and thinking of ways that you could possibly perfect it. It’s doing the absolute, very best job you can at the time and then getting that work out into the hands of people who would appreciate what you do.

Will the average person notice the slight awkwardness of a brush stroke in a painting? The odd musical phrasing in a classical piece? A flubbed line in a play? Nope. Not at all. The average person is going to be focused on the piece of art being presented – the item you created. Not all of the imperfections that you personally see when you view your art.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of constantly sharing your works with the world is that you’ll be able to get first hand, live experience that shows you what works and what doesn’t work. Without this kind of awesome feedback, you’d never be able to know how to hone your craft into something greater. It’s one thing to be able to write a novel that you think deserves to be on a best seller list; it’s another thing to give it to somebody so they can assess what you’ve written and ofter a critique. Getting into a cycle of creating a work, sharing a work, then creating another even stronger work is something that will help you your entire life.

Think of it like a real world tennis lesson. When you first start playing tennis, you’re probably going to be absolute terrible. But with a teacher, and some practice off court, you can surely expect your skills to gradually improve over time… to the point where you might be pretty competent at hitting those balls. With the right mix of dedicated practice and a teacher to guide your moves to make sure you aren’t making any beginner’s mistakes or picking up on the wrong technique, it’s easy to see how your skill level would begin to improve and eventually soar.

Sharing creative works works the same exact way. Instead of learning tennis, it’d be creating valuable works for the world. Instead of hiring a private coach, you’d get real time feedback from your friends, family, even strangers who stumble upon what you do. Instead of practice, you’d be refining your process and coming up with an even better item to share with others. This process never changes, no matter if you’re learning a new sport, picking up a musical instrument, or writing a book of poems. Remember when you first learned how to drive a car? The method was exactly the same. You try, you got feedback, you tried again.

Creating and deliver value is at the heart of any creative career, ranging from fashion to music to acting to art. But it’s not enough to create a few things in hopes that one of them catches on with the public. You need to be the person who strives to always create something better, something brand new, every single day of your life. Be the person who takes every single completed work and shares it with the world.