The classic view is that targets should be smart targets – smart as in
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant
- Time bound
OK – I get that. I hate acronyms by the way! This is what I came up with, still SMART, but my SMART;
- Specific
- Measurable
- Ambitious
- Risky
- Time bound
That will do.
Specific – that is fine.
Measurable – I agree entirely with this as well.
Achievable – this is not challenging enough for me. I want ambitious, uncomfortable targets that will really push me. They need to be ambitious.
Relevant. Of course they will be relevant. Why would I set targets that are not relevant? So I have a spare word here – risky works for me.
Time bound – fine – these are my targets for 2018. If I get them done sooner then great – I will replace any completed targets with new ones – keep things moving forwards.
My targets need to be ambitious and risky.
I am going to push myself in directions I want to go. I did say on my photography blog last year that I wanted to break from convention this year, and try different directions.
I have spent a considerable amount of time following conventions, which is fine – I needed to do this to be able to work out when and how I wanted to progress in 2018.
I have already started on this, and hope to be able to chalk off my targets over the course of 2018.
What has this all to do with photography? Well these are the targets for my photography business for 2018.
Let me add some context.
Ambitious targets – there are a few of them.
Stock photography income of 50% of the annual UK salary by the end of 2018 – that is very ambitious.
10,000 YouTube views – again ambitious and means I have to do some work to achieve this.
1,000 website views per month. I was getting 200-300 website visitors not that long ago. 1,000 was a number that I do not think is achievable that I plucked out of the air. And the further question this raises – what number of visitors will be f commercial interest to companies? I am pretty sure 200-300 is not.
Risky
A foreign assignment – this will be a real game changer. Working abroad brings a whole new range of things for me to consider – to be honest I don’t even know what they are yet!
Commercial clients – this is risky as it is forcing me to put myself right into that big bad commercial world, and the risk of rejection. And that is what I want to do – push myself and do things that quite frankly I am dreading doing.
Onwards and upwards!
