You’ve Set Your Goals for 2022, Now What?

Now that you’ve stated your goals, how do arrive at the accomplishment of them?

You don’t want your bright and shiny goals to get lost like all those past New Year’s resolutions (photograph every day, put together my portfolio, exercise more, don’t eat____, walk the dog every day, clean my office, garage, car, etc., be nice to____) These often start to fade by the end of Jan 3rd!

Once you have goals, what’s the next step?

Strategic planning. Oxford defines “strategic” as: “Relating to the identification of long-term or overall aims and interests and the means of achieving them.” Also, “Carefully designed or planned to serve a particular purpose or advantage.”

This applies to each of us as individuals, as well as to our practices. What are your directions and your strategy to get to your goal, and what are your decisions about allocating your resources?

It can boil it down to determination and getting to know more about your tools of management (see 3 above “Knowledge is power.“)

Here’s a simple example from Annie Liebovitz’ new book At Work:

“The first thing I did with my very first camera was climb Mt Fuji. Climbing Mt Fuji is a lesson in determination and moderation. It would be fair to ask if I took the moderation part to heart. But it certainly was a lesson in respecting your camera. If I was going to live with this thing, I was going to have to think about what that meant. There weren’t going to be any pictures without it.”

Boils it down to determination and getting to know her camera, and as she said later, taking it with her everywhere, shooting tons of pictures.

Ansel Adams came up with the strategy of moving photography from simply being a recording device, to using the whole process as a means to capture and show the world what he visualized. Remember that we largely have him, and his pals, to thank for moving photography from being simply another tool for illustrations to being a fine art—something we tend to take for granted. He operated on a long-term strategy to accomplish that goal.

So now that you have your goals worked out, lets define your strategy, get out your paper and do this (and yes leave them as comments too so we can learn from you.)

What are your decisions and your directions to yourself? Yours could be as simple as “take at least one shot a day, even if it’s with my iPhone!”What are your resources? This includes your time, equipment, classes, models, etc. Just take a good look around. In an upcoming episode of PhotoShow you’ll hear Thomas Hawk talk about how he steals moment during the day to get shots— waiting for a meeting to start, or walking to one—just grab those moments and fill them with your shots!Now get clever and work out your strategy to make use of these points to arrive at your goals.

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