I have just written down my October goals. I do this every month (write down that month’s goals, not my October goals – that would be weird, except for in October), and they cover all kinds of things, though they tend to focus on work and health/fitness.
I by no means always attain them – especially the health/fitness ones – but, as I touched on in my last post, I try to keep them to goals I can control. There’s no point in me writing, for example, that my goal is to win a BAFTA – especially as the BAFTA Film Awards take place in February, not October. No. Instead, for example, one goal I’ve written down this month is: ‘Deliver an outline I’m proud of, to deadline’. Those are pretty much aspects I can control when it comes to my current work project – which is, you guessed it, writing an outline (a prose document written ahead of a script) for some lovely producers, to an upcoming deadline in October.
As for the ‘proud of’ aspect: author and coach Chris Smith wrote a piece about this on his and Bec Evans’ Substack Breakthroughs & Blocks this week – prompted by recent remarks by Richard Osman on his podcast – saying that remembering you’re proud of your work really helps when promoting it (and/or yourself). It’s true; and I’d go one step further and say that it helps when setting or clarifying goals, too, because it helps to keep that goal self-contained, within your control. ‘Deliver an outline the producers love, to deadline’ is not a helpful goal to set myself, because the producers might not love the outline – and whether they do or don’t is partly to do with what I produce but also partly to do with them and how they receive it. Channelling my inner Girl Guide and doing my best, however: producing something I am happy with, nay proud of? That’s solely within my purview. As was the use of the word ‘purview’ in that last sentence.
For all those who set goals too – or are thinking of doing so – here’s one final thing I do which I also find helpful. At the start of each month, before setting the new month’s goals, I look at my document with the previous month’s goals on it, work my way through it deleting anything I didn’t achieve (and trying not to beat myself up about that), confirming the things I have, and adding in anything unexpected that came up that was a win… and then I rename the file, changing it from SEPTEMBER – GOALS to SEPTEMBER – ACHIEVEMENTS! (And yes, I do always put an exclamation mark. I like to think that’s because I’m being positive and upbeat, but to be honest there could also be an element of being genuinely shocked: Look, Andrea, you actually achieved something! You!).
Then at the end of the year, I look back at all these monthly little ACHIEVEMENTS! lists, combine the highlights to make a year-end list, and… well, to be honest I feel a bit like Heather Small when she’s asking us what we did that day to make ourselves proud. ‘This, Heather! I did this!’ I can say. And then perhaps Heather and I would have a nice chat, which would inspire me to start writing a new list of goals, such as: 1. Search for the hero inside myself; 2. Search for the secrets I hide, and so on.
But I digress.
We talk about celebrating the wins – big or small – in life, and I think this is such good and important advice. Our negativity bias means that we’ll often remember the bad stuff over the good, criticism over praise, our failures over our wins. Whether it’s because I believe in trying to counter that or because I’m just incredibly forgetful, I make a point of not just trying to celebrate these wins/achievements, but also to record them somehow. By doing the above and also, for example, doing something like this:
When the producer of one of my films called me up to tell me about the lovely feedback my spec script had got from sales agents, I immediately opened up a text file on my computer, and as he spoke to me down the phone I literally typed every word he said – so that I wouldn’t forget what these people had said to him about my work.
I’m sure he had no idea that I was doing this, and might have thought I was a bit bonkers if he had known. But the result is a text file I can and do return to when imposter syndrome strikes, when my inner critic is being particularly vocal, when I’m doubting myself or my ability as a writer. It helps to give me a bit of balance and perspective, and to remember one of my ‘wins’.
So here’s to recording your wins, here’s to our October Goals, here’s to an auspicious autumn… and here’s one of my all-time favourite cartoons, by artist Rachel Greenberg. Hope you have a great one too, folks.
