How to Cultivate Motivation for Your Creative Goals
Last week I wrote about setting goals and intentions to support your creative life; but how do you stay motivated to follow through on your goals once you have them?
Motivation isn’t a quality we either have or we don’t—it’s a skill we build with practice. That being the case, motivation doesn’t have to determine what you accomplish, and you don’t need to rely on automatic motivation to pursue your goals.
Follow-through depends on setting goals that work for you, knowing how to encourage your motivation and inspiration, and having habits or routines that keep you practicing even when you don’t feel motivated.
I’ve found these practices to be instrumental in motivation and follow-through:
Effort over outcome. Focusing on the process more than the product can encourage a growth mindset and increase your motivation. If your creative process is anything like mine, you might find that the needs of your project grow or change as you get into it. This is normal. But it also can be discouraging if you focus too much on the end result and not enough on the process of getting there.
Review your goals. Read over goals regularly, and keep your intentions in your mind. By reviewing your goals, you’re keeping them within your conscious awareness. Rather than writing a goal, never looking at it again, and forgetting about it by the next month, reviewing your goals means you’re more likely to follow through on them because you actually remember what they are. I’d suggest doing this at least weekly, although what works for each individual is different. Find what works for you, but don’t just write your goals and then ignore them. If you’re really feeling stuck, you could even use your goals as abstract creative inspiration.
Equal weight, not equal priority. If you want to accomplish big goals, you have to let them take up space. All your goals can have equal importance to you, but that doesn’t mean you give them equal priority. I love the jar and rock analogy for prioritizing tasks. If you want to fill a jar with rocks, pebbles, sand, and water, you have to place them in the jar in that order. It’s the same with your time and creative tasks, the big goals have to take priority, otherwise they won’t fit in around everything else. Find which goals are your metaphorical big rocks, and prioritize those before you spend time on the smaller ones. Prioritizing also requires you to recognize when you are most likely to follow through. For instance, if you know you need to work on your book before work, because you’ll always put it off if you wait until the evening, you might need to rearrange your morning routine and put some of those smaller tasks off until later in the day.
Cultivate interest. We tend to be motivated by what we’re interested in. I’ve found that interest grows with attention. This could look like watching YouTube videos related to your creative medium, or thinking about your project while doing housework or mundane tasks, walking, or exercise. Prime yourself to think about your creative form, and it will be easier to stay inspired. However, be careful not to spend all your creative time thinking and exploring rather than doing the work.
Make plans around your goals. A goal without a plan is simply a dream (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, kinda). There’s nothing wrong with dreams, but accomplishment requires action. Make time for both planning and doing. One of the ways I do this in my own creative life is by making clear plans on the weekend for the coming week; this includes which tasks I’m going to do (in detail) and what day/time I’m going to do them. Then I follow a strict schedule during the week with a specific time designated for each task.
Don’t be too rigid in your planning. This might seem to contradict the previous point, but flexible planning can be important for your creative brain. For example, one of my goals is to shoot a particular photo series, but I still need time to gather/create props and brainstorm more images. I have a time slot in my schedule for this project and there’s flexibility within that time slot, but I know that it’s designated for this specific project.
Evaluate as you go. Check in with yourself through the process and make adjustments where/when necessary. As you review your goals and your progress toward them, ask what worked, what didn’t, and what could be adjusted or improved.
Don’t discount baby steps. Starting small might not feel like you’re making progress at first, but it’s about acclimating yourself to an intentional creative practice. Establish a habit and then build on it. If you have a bigger goal, recognize the smaller steps it takes to get there. For instance, if you’re writing a book, each sentence, each page, each chapter is a step. Do what you can each day, even if that feels small in the moment.
Celebrate the small wins. If you continuously dismiss your small steps, you’ll get progressively more discouraged. Instead, celebrate the incremental progress you take toward your goals. Find small milestones you can acknowledge that demonstrate progress you’ve made and that affirm your dedication to following through. For example, if you’ve drawn every day for a week, that’s a win! If you’ve written a hundred pages, celebrate that. When you set smaller milestones for yourself and acknowledge them along the way, you’ll have more confidence in your ability to make progress, which will help you stay motivated even when showing up for your work is a challenge.
Find a routine or schedule that will work for you. Be practical. What time of day works best? Consider your obligations and lifestyle. There is no right or wrong here, it’s just about knowing yourself and the way you engage in creativity. Build habits into your life to support your goals. Where does it fits best? Are there other tasks you could habit stack with your practice? For instance, maybe you draw at night while watching TV. When are you most likely to be consistent even if life is chaotic, but also when does your mind focus best? Lots of morning people like to create before their minds are filled with the distractions of the day. Many are more creative at night and use creativity as a way to relax and wind down. Consider how your mind works best to make your plans.
Make it accessible. Sometimes a mental barrier to creativity can discourage creative practice, yet the practical barriers are the final nail in the coffin that prevent you from creating. For instance, if you want to paint, but you know that requires you to go into the basement, find a box of paint, brushes, and some kind of paper, that are all in different places, and then clear off a space on the table before you can even try, you’re creating a barrier for yourself that makes you more likely to give up before you even begin. Instead, make your creative practice as accessible as possible. For example, if you have a goal to write a haiku every night before bed, you could put a notebook and pen on your nightstand so even if you forget before getting in bed, you can still write one before you fall asleep.
Look for opportunities. Are there times during the day you could use for creativity that otherwise would be used waiting or scrolling? For example, if you’re waiting for a family member at an appointment, could you write notes on your phone? Or maybe you could cross stitch while watching TV at night.
Let your intentions guide you. Allow the vision of yourself as a creative person to guide your decisions. How can you approach situations in life creatively? This can extend into how you organize your closet, how you solve a disagreement with a friend, how you approach your creative practice, or any other area of life. When you keep your intentions at the forefront of your mind, you’re more likely to recognize those opportunities for creativity, and you’re training your brain to think in creative directions.
Get back up again. Life happens. Be flexible and don’t allow a perfectionistic desire for an unbroken streak to prevent you from regaining a streak after it’s been broken. No one will create perfectly. Part of creative motivation is understanding that the practice itself is a process, and you don’t have to be endlessly prolific to make consistent progress.
What are your favorite ways to stay creatively motivated?
Happy creating!
🦋 Amarie