Accountability is a fabulous motivator. Having someone (or lots of someones) that you have to check in with on a regular basis and admit that, yeah, you slacked off on project x, y, or z makes you way less likely to actually slack off on project x, y, or z. I know it does for me, at least!

Why is this such a big motivator? Because we, as human, social creatures (even the introverts amount us are social creatures, our social just looks different than an extrovert’s social) crave approval by others. Even if we think we’re hot stuff and have an ego the size of Gibraltar, there’s someone whose disapproval or disappointment would crush us. So we work our tails off to report something positive, some sort of progress.

All that to say: I’m going to post some goals for the upcoming month and see if that doesn’t help get ’em done! And you’re welcome to post your goals for August in the comments if you’d like to, and I’ll email you on September 1st to see how you did!

Personal Goals:

1. Unpack the majority of the boxes from the move. I don’t expect to get them all done in a month (after all, I’ve lived places for multiple years only to move and find some boxes never got unpacked, it happens), I just want to be functionally unpacked by the end of the month.
2. Plan our housewarming party! This is one of the big reasons for unpacking: we can start entertaining again. We want to do a sort of open house-style party on Saturday early in September, so that means planning it out this month and letting people know.
3. Scrapbook 10 pages. That’s only 5, 2-page layouts, absolutely doable even if I were only to do a set a weekend.

Professional Goals:

1. Keep up with the MIID Summer School assignments. Several months ago I signed up for all 3 tracks of Make It In Design’s summer school course to help beef up my portfolio a bit. The first creative briefs went out this week with 2 weeks to complete each assignment. I’ve also signed up for Lilla Roger’s Global Talent Search, the first round of which is this month.
2. Redesign my online portfolio. Again, item 1 feeds into item 2. In June I took Tara Reed’s Art Licensing Academy course as it (licensed art) is something I’ve wanted to get into for a while. July was consumed by the move, so now it’s time to apply what I’ve learned both in putting together my work into collections and making my website licensing-friendly.
3. Finish (?) the substitutions supplement for What to Feed Your Raiding Party. This one’s a bit on the lofty side, but it’s a project I’ve been picking at for over a year and it just needs to get done! Plus it’s good to have at least one goal that’s going to be a bit of a stretch–if everything is too simple it’s easier to put it all off. I designed “worksheets” to make sure I’ve got the options I need for each recipe in the book, now I just need to actually use them. Once this is done then I can start the real work on the first sequel to the book.

Of course there’s a lot of day-to-day stuff that will be going on in between all of the above. I wish I only had 6 things to concentrate on this month! Hah! I’ve got a bunch of books that still need reviewing (but first I have to unpack them), my usual posting over here, the rinse and repeat repetitiveness of the day job, and spending time with Todd. And if any client work pops up, illustrations or otherwise, then I’m always open for that!

Here’s to a shiny, new month filled with possibilities!