Setting your creative goals

The foundation of a creative project is your sense of purpose.  For that reason, a positive, specific, and realistic goal is in many ways your most important creative asset.

• Your goal is positive if you can go from "X should be different" to "I intend to achieve Y." 

• It's specific if you know what success would look like; if you can envision your endpoint in some detail, and describe it to others.  

• Your goal is realistic if you or your partners are able to take the real-world steps necessary to achieve it.   

Getting to a positive, significant, realistic goal usually takes pre-work, where you explore and consider different types of goals before you settle on one.  In the actively creative process, the first three steps out of five (identification, incubation, insight) are about defining a creative goal.  

For more about how to develop a creative goal, please check out my book:  Actively Creative: A Guided Process.