I’ve been running for almost a year now and it’s been going pretty well. For most of the year I was running because of my wedding in October. Not so much to lose weight but I wanted to make sure I stayed in shape and didn’t let the stress overwhelm me. Now that the wedding is over, I’ve still been running but truthfully it’s harder to stay motivated without a goal in place. Most people run so they are ready for the next race but I haven’t signed up for any races and with winter setting in, there are less of them. 

It’s easy to get discouraged when you don’t have a goal in place and the same is true with work. You can get stuck in a groove or even a rut when you’re running the same path everyday. 

Figuring out goals, short term or long term really help push you in the right direction. I have a number of goals with LooseKeys, short term and long term that I think helps keep us focused and making great work. Now I need to figure out the same with my running and figure out a good reason to lace up everyday. 

Every day we need some small victory to keep our spirits up. Within your business it can be hard to measure the victories. If you’re not releasing a product or update everyday, you might not have much to show for your day. That’s why it seems important to find those smaller wins everyday. We all know how great it is to cross that task off the to-do list, no matter how tiny it might be. Almost every morning I’ve been starting my day with a 3 mile run. Once that victory for the day is done, I’m ready to accomplish the next goal. Having those smaller goals make you feel better about tackling the big tasks you might have to get done. So keep track of those victories, no matter how insignificant they might seem. It will keep moral up and help you feel that you have momentum pushing you towards those big accomplishments that you can’t wait to share with others.

Failure isn’t all negative, it’s more a process of wrong choices that help you to find out what’s going to work. Sometimes they’re small, others are huge but this is how you learn.

As a designer, you have days where nothing you create looks good. You don’t stop being a designer because your creative juice ran out. It’s something you have to get through, then move on. Failure is the same way. When you fall down, you have to get up and brush yourself off and continue to your goal. I don’t think any of us would have learned to ride a bike if we would have given up after that first spill.

Even if you make 10 attempts at getting it right and fail at 9 of them, you still got it right in the end. Sure it took you 9 tries but you got back up and tried again every time. You’re going to make many mistakes along the way. Sure it might not work out the first time but sooner or later the odds are going to turn and you’ll hit that jackpot.

How quickly it can happen, losing site of your vision and your goals. This happened to me over the last couple weeks and I find myself needing to take a step back to remind myself why I decided to work for myself and what I’m trying to do. After years of creating motion graphics work in the industry for small and large clients I decided to take the plunge and try to start my own business and work for myself. Being my own boss and creating my own hours, working where and when I needed. I wanted to focus my craft and create videos for startups and small businesses. To see the work that I create help those businesses grow and succeed. And I’ve been very busy doing just that! And yet I quickly lost sight of this goal in only a months time. I recently took on a project that split my focus, it took time away from this goal and time away from important projects that I should have been focusing more attention on. It wasn’t something that I had passion for or something that helped me to reach towards my goal but for some reason I still found myself saying yes to doing it. I can see now why the idea of a mission statement or a defined goal is so important. It gives you something to keep yourself from going off track. Try writing up a mission statement or a set of goals for yourself or your company if you haven’t already. If you don’t have a clear path set out, sometimes all it takes is a push in the wrong direction to remind yourself of the right direction that you should be heading in.