development – sophie counts clouds

Hello!

Setting mini goals has been a way for me to keep myself focused and making progress for at least three years now, but in the last few months I’ve been really making sure that my monthly goals allow for consistent development from my yearly goals and already I’m seeing progress and it’s so motivating! Seeing a whole month of goals that I know I’ve solidly worked on makes me feel so good and so motivated to carry on!

To have 100% completed 3 tasks and half completed 2 tasks of my February mini goals, I know I made solid progress! I think, in part, vaguely planning my monthly goals for the year has made this easier because I can make sure I’m allotting enough time for each goal I want to achieve, but I know for a fact that I’m working really hard to make as much progress as I can too!

This is a combination of clever goal setting (knowing that I really want to achieve these goals, rather than feeling obliged to) and having the yearly/monthly/weekly goals and to do lists in place to hold myself accountable. I’m feeling so motivated right now and I can’t wait to jump right in to my March mini goals!

1. Start writing a book adaptation screenplay

I got a taste of screenplay writing for my dissertation last year and I very quickly discovered how much I enjoyed and how much more there was to learn about the art of the writing style. One of my potential dissertation topics was about book adaptations and my final dissertation was all about storytelling, so I thought writing an adaptation would be a good place to start to learn about the style without having to consider my own story as well.

This is just for personal use – I’m not claiming to be an experienced screenwriter and I’m definitely not writing any movie scripts to sell anytime soon. But this is a project I want to finish over the course of the year, so this is just the beginning.

2. Start my first cosplay costume

I’ve been banging on about cosplay for years, but this year I’m going to do it! Another goal that I want to achieve over the year rather than in just one month, but I want to spend this month planning it all – what I want to make, what I want to buy and how I can bring it all together.

I’m creating a Team Yell costume from Pokemon Sun and Moon (to go with my sister’s Marnie cosplay). I’m hoping this will really help me develop my sewing and learn about so many different kinds of crafting outside of clothes to make all the accessories. I think I’ll document some of the process on my TikTok if you’re interested!

3. March wedding tasks!

I said in my ‘how I planned my wedding planning’ post that I’d broken everything down and assigned tasks to each month and so far, it’s working relatively well!

My task for this month is to figure out what wedding insurance is and whether we need it, which I imagine will only take an afternoon really! I also need to finalise booking a photographer and videographer because I did a lot of research about it in February but it was all very overwhelming (and much more expensive than I thought it would be!) so hopefully I’ll be able to get that decision made this month.

4. Develop my 5 year plan

I don’t really like calling it a ‘plan’ because it’s definitely not certain enough to be a plan, but I have a spread in my bullet journal listing the next five years and goals and ideas for what I’d like to achieve in each of them. I’ve not looked at my 5 year plan since I last updated in 2020 (2020-2024) and I really need to start my 2021-2025 one, but that’s what this goal is for!

Rather than sticking with my 2019-2023 plan that I started in my 2019 journal, I like moving my 5 year plan through journals with me because I think it’s a much more realistic way of looking ahead for the next 5 years. In 2019 I never would have been able to predict that I would be where I am at the beginning of 2021 and it would have got really messy with crossing out and changing things, so I prefer the rolling approach.

5. Find somewhere new to live!

Although we have a lovely landlord on our one bed house, we’re ready to find something bigger and move somewhere more relevant to my work (if I ever get to work anywhere other than home). We are on a rolling contract in our current house, so we don’t have a deadline to find a new house by, but the time is right for us!

And to be clear; we’re still renting. We don’t have the savings for buying and we’re only 24 and 25 – I know people who are buying houses, but I don’t know a single one who’s saved every penny themselves and not had a rather large savings account from parents or grandparents. No shade, not judging anyone, just kind of fed up of being asked about it as someone who’s literally only just started their first career job – I have not got the income to have tens of thousands of pounds in savings!

And then my rolling monthly goals are:

Read 2 books
Put a certain amount of money in my savings account
Have a date night with le fiancé

I’ve had a good old ramble this month haven’t I? So I’ll keep the ending short and sweet – I love goal setting! Should I write a post about how I planned all of my monthly goals for the year?

Thank you for reading,

Sophie xx

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Hello!

I write a lot about my monthly and yearly goals, I try to share tips on what’s worked for me and I’ve had a fair few messages from people saying they’ve starting using advice I’ve given, which is a lovely feeling. But I’ve never written about adapting goals and embracing change.

For me, the thought of adapting or getting rid of a goal feels like cheating, like I’ve done something wrong or failed. What I need to learn is that recognising when a goal doesn’t serve me or my long term goals or aspirations, there’s no point wasting time and energy to achieve it for the sake of not adapting it.

Maybe I’m making this sound more melodramatic than it is, especially considering the context that made me consider this at all. One of my monthly goals was to hit certain milestones in my crafting – I wanted to make four more face masks (which I’ve done!), plan my new cross stitch design and finish learning how to knit a soft toy that I intended to stuff with all my old holey socks (clean, of course).

I sat down to work on this duck and I realised I was getting stressed about all the different types of knitting stitches I needed to figure out and it all felt too complicated and big, when my crafts were meant to be my outlet to relax – to just sit, shove some YouTube on in the background and make something with my hands without thinking too hard.

But when I realised I didn’t want to make the toy, the thought of not achieving my goal bothered me.

So I changed it.

All I want from my knitting is to sit and do the same stitch mindlessly over and over again, so I’m just doing that and maybe one day it’ll be a scarf but it’s therapeutic and it felt so much better than forcing myself to do something that meant I had to concentrate when I wanted to do the opposite and unwind. So I changed my goal to just ‘work on knitting a scarf’ and in the evening if I’ve done everything else I just sit and watch videos or watch my boyfriend play video games and knit without really thinking.

I feel way less stressed and intimidated by the goal and I’m enjoying the process of knitting again because of it.

In the scheme of things, a craft goal is not that important and I definitely placed too much weight on it. But it made me think of my 2019 goals – at the beginning of the year I set a goal about building a freelance career because I had some work lined up, but that fell through before the end of January and I just ignored it for the rest of the year. I missed an opportunity to adapt the goal into something more suitable and perhaps have achieved something else in the span of that year.

Of course there’s going too far with adapting goals – changing them as soon as they get hard is missing the entire point of growing and learning from your goals. But if your goals as they currently stand don’t aid your growth in the direction you want it to – whether you realise it’s not a path for you, you want to try an alternative method or it is negatively impacting you – then continuing putting time into it isn’t worth it.

I don’t know if this was useful in any way, shape or form – there’s every chance I was just making a revelation about knitting into something way bigger than it deserved to be – but it’s helped my mindset on goals not being as rigid as I’d thought and allowing them the flexibility to serve your greater ambitions.

Thank you for reading – I hope you and your loved ones are happy, healthy and staying safe!

Sophie xx

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