Setting Goals

Dec 27, 2010

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last four painted scarf warps…..

I always work best when I have deadline pressure bearing down on me. Doesn’t matter if the deadline comes from outside or from within – no deadline, no pressure to get anything accomplished. :}

So I learned a long time ago that I am a person who needs to set goals with a time frame. Not much point for me in saying I want to do such and such if I don’t also set a date for completion.

Not that I always meet the arbitrary date but without it I rather suspect I’d get a whole lot less accomplished.

One of my favourite quotes is from, I believe, Alice in Wonderland “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will do.”

Or another one, source escapes me “If you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know when you get there?”

And so I have long term goals, mid-range goals, and short term goals. Generally I have a list each day of what I want to accomplish before the day is done. I have lists for the things I want to accomplish this week. And then there are the long range goals, generally associated with events for which I must be prepared – teaching workshops, selling at craft fairs and so on.

Really BIG projects (writing a book, for instance) are sometimes difficult to get started on. Why? Well, partly because I spend quite a long time staring at the elephant wondering which bit I should chew first. Partly, I think, because it takes me a while to work through the sequence of tasks that need to be done in order to eat that elephant.

I’m not a person who thinks quickly. Mostly I tend to let big projects simmer for quite a long while until I get a really clear picture of all of the steps required to get me to completion.

In the meantime I make lists of smaller jobs that I know I can accomplish. I even use the Big Job to spur me on to getting to some of the smaller jobs I may have been procrastinating about completing! :O (Oh the psychological tricks we play on ourselves!!!!)

I leave for John C. Campbell Folk School on Jan. 7. Before I leave I want to:

Weave the scarf warp currently on the loom plus the 4 that are left.

Dress the AVL with a prototype warp of 2/20 merc. cotton

Finish transcribing WeaveCast 55

Dye Day (tomorrow) – 10 pounds of silk gimp

I also have to pack my bags and prepare the yarn I’ll be weaving at JCC.

Last but not least – I hope to write the introduction for the Big Project.

We’ll see how I do.

Currently reading Spider Bones by Kathy Reichs