Creative goals, my friends, are where it’s at! We're diving into how to set those goals without letting them suck the joy right out of your artistic soul. You know, the kind of goals that don’t just live in a dusty spreadsheet and make you feel guilty when you skip a day. We’re talking about the spark that keeps the creative flames burning bright, not the pressure that turns your passion into a job description. Join me as we explore redefining success, embracing the process, and remembering that joy isn’t the opposite of discipline; it’s the reason it works! So, grab your favorite snack, get comfy, and let's chat about creating a fun, flexible framework for your creative journey!

Redefine What Success Looks Like

1. Shift from outcome-based success (“Did I sell it?”) to process-based success (“Did I show up today?”).
2. Remind yourself that creative growth doesn’t always look linear.
3. Celebrate progress, not perfection.

Create Flexible Frameworks

1. Replace rigid deadlines with creative checkpoints—review and adjust as you go.
2. Allow spontaneity within structure; it keeps your art alive.
3. Think of your goals as a map, not a prison.

Align Goals with Your “Why”

1. Ask: Why am I creating this? Who is it for?
2. Purpose-driven goals feel lighter and more sustainable.
3. Revisit your “why” whenever burnout or doubt creeps in.

Protect the Joy of Play

1. Keep a “no-pressure” creative space—sketchbook, sound experiments, word dumps—just for fun.
2. Play fuels mastery; it reminds you why you started.
3. Let joy be part of your process, not just the reward at the end.

Build Reflection Into Your Routine

1. Schedule time to look back on what worked and what didn’t—this creates mindful progress.
2. Reflection re-energizes your sense of purpose.
3. Use journaling or short voice memos to capture insights between projects.

Topics covered in this series

Sharing Your Work Online for the First Time

Dealing With Criticism and Rejection

Finding (or Building) an Artistic Community

Collaboration as a Creative Catalyst

Staying Motivated Long-Term

Art Challenges & Social Media Trends

Mental Health & Creativity

Art Challenges & Social Media Trends

Setting Up a Creative Workspace

Creative Constraints & Prompts

Measuring Growth as an Artist

Why Do You Create?

When to Call Yourself an Artist

Balancing Art and Life

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To reach out to me, email timothy@createartpodcast.com I would love to hear about your journey and what you are working on. If you would like to be on the show or have me discuss a topic that is giving you trouble write in and let's start that conversation.

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Takeaways:

1. Creative goals should be about joy and inspiration, not just checklists and guilt trips.
2. Remember that creative growth is often a roller coaster, full of ups and downs—don't stress it!
3. Align your artistic goals with your personal 'why' to keep your creativity flowing and meaningful.
4. Celebrate your progress, not perfection, because art is more fun when you let go of the pressure!
5. Set flexible frameworks for your creative process; think of goals as maps, not prison sentences.
6. Protect the joy of play in your creative space, and remember that it's okay to experiment without the pressure.

Foreign.

Let's talk about creative goals.

Now, I'm not talking about the kind that live in a spreadsheet that you never look at and not the kind that make you feel guilty when you miss a day.

I mean, the kind of goals that actually help you keep on creating without crushing the joy that made you start in the first place.

Because somewhere along the way, a lot of artists turn their passions into pressure.

Hey, friends, this is Timothy Chemo Brian, your head instigator for Create Art podcast, where I bring my over 30 years of experience in the arts and education world to help you tame your inner critic and create more than you consume.

So we're continuing on with the new Artist Compass series.

We've got probably one more episode to go on that, and today we're talking about setting your creative goals.

Now, this is something that every creative struggles with.

Setting those goals without killing the joy of it in the feeling.

You start with inspiration, then somewhere along the line, that checklist takes over.

That spark fades.

So how do we stay motivated without turning your art into.

Into a job description?

I mean, I don't know about you, but for me, I already have a day job and I have a family, so I don't want my art to turn into that.

How this all starts off with is just redefining what success means to you.

You don't need to hit every milestone to grow.

You just need to show up, stay curious, and let your goals guide you, not control you.

Remember, joy is not the opposite of discipline.

It's the reason why discipline works.

All right, so let's start off with redefining what success looks like.

Basically, you want to shift from outcome based success.

Am I selling it to process based success, such as, hey, did I show up today and create something today?

It's going to re you.

You have to trust that it's going to reach your audience.

Trust yourself, trust your practice.

It's going to reach somebody.

It's going to sell somewhere.

The big thing is, are you showing up each and every day for your creativity or for when you have your sessions?

For me, I usually have my sessions late at night when I put the kids to bed, or on the weekends when they're out doing whatever that they're doing.

Sometimes Saturday night, sometimes Sunday morning.

But I asked myself, did I show up?

Did I really put in the reps to go ahead and be creative and remind yourself that creative growth isn't always linear, it's not always up and to the right.

Sometimes it's a roller coaster.

Sometimes you're up.

Sometimes you're down just with what's going on in your life, with how you're feeling.

And don't beat yourself up about that.

It's okay.

You have a life.

You have a life outside of work, outside of family, outside of your creativity.

And sometimes stuff gets really messy and that's okay.

But when it's time to show up, make sure that you're showing up.

And always remember, you want to celebrate your progress.

If you're getting better at something, celebrate that it's not about perfection.

You're not.

I'm going to let you in on a little secret, okay?

Don't tell anybody this.

It's not ever going to be perfect.

It's not ever going to be fully done, fully realized.

It's not going to happen.

But you may surprise yourself with what you can put out.

So don't let that perfection influence you, impact you, myself, Lately, the past, I don't know, about a month, month and a half, I've been doing acrylic painting and I've been following somebody.

But their videos are up online.

It's actually, I'll let you in on it.

The artist Sherpa, and I've been doing some paintings with that.

They're not perfect.

She shows me how to do what she's doing and she's very forgiving.

She, she's, hey, it's not going to look exactly like this, but she wants to celebrate, or she wanted to celebrate what people who were viewing her videos were doing.

So we want to celebrate progress, not perfection.

If I was to wait for perfection, I wouldn't have sent these paintings out to friends and family.

I would have still be working on the very first painting, going, oh my God, I did it wrong.

Or I got this line messed up, or I didn't get this color just right.

That's perfection I'm already good with.

Hey, I paint like a four year old on crack, but I'm getting better.

So next week I'll paint like a 5 year old on crack and then a 6 year old on acid and a 7 year old on PCP.

Whatever it is, celebrate the progression, not the perfection.

So next up, we're going to be talking about creating a flexible framework.

Now, you may have set this up in a spreadsheet or some project management software.

And you've got hard deadlines and checkpoints where this has to be done by this date in time.

Here's the thing.

Replace that with creative checkpoints, review them and adjust them as you go, am I growing in this?

Am I getting better at this?

Do I need to go back in time or in my process and adjust something there?

So those rigid deadlines, what are they there for?

I mean, unless somebody is paying you ahead of time for something to be done in a week or two, and I have my personal business where I do have that, where I do have some rigid timelines that I need to have stuff done by.

But when I'm doing my creativity, when I'm doing my creative stuff, I just have checkpoints.

Am I feeling good about this?

Is this what I want to do?

And I can adjust it as I go.

It can be a little murky, and that's okay.

Allow that spontaneity within whatever structure you choose to use.

Allow that spontaneity to happen.

So maybe you're working on a painting and you're like, what?

I feel like writing great.

Or I feel like doing some music now this painting is really inspiring some music in me.

Or, you know what?

I'm hitting a block here.

I'm hitting a brick wall here.

I'm going to do something else that's creative and do that instead for a little while.

Go ahead, do that.

You may.

A lot of times we can solve these problems unconsciously, so we need to be doing something else to allow our subconscious to fix what we want to have fixed.

So distract yourself with something else, preferably something creative.

But, you know, maybe it's.

You go for a walk and listen to a podcast.

Maybe you go for a walk and listen to this podcast is specifically this episode.

Whatever it is, go do that.

And think of your goals as a map, not a prison.

Okay, we're going to go from point A to point B. I don't know how we're going to get there, but sometimes we're going to circle around point B for a while until we're happy, and then we'll go to point B.

It's a map.

It's not.

It's not.

Like back in the day, we used to have MapQuest and.

Or we used to have the paper maps.

I remember those days.

Or you have an app on your phone that will lead you to where you want to go.

And it's going to get you either with the least amount of gas or least amount of traffic or whatever it is.

Have some fun.

Have some fun with whatever your goal is.

It's just.

It's a map without any roadways in there, without any traffic.

It's just a map.

Here's point A.

Here's point B, however you want to get there, have fun with it.

Here's a river that's right there.

Here's a mountain that's right there.

You might have to climb the mountain to get over to point B, but it's a map.

It's not set in stone.

It's not to handcuff you there.

It's just to go, hey, I want to get from here to there.

However you do it, that's how you do it.

Be flexible with your frameworks.

So my third point is aligning your goals with your why.

In podcasting, we talk about what is your why all the time and always focusing on what that why is.

Same thing with your art.

Same thing with your painting, your writing, your sculpture, your dance, whatever it is, whatever you're doing.

Why am I creating this and who is it for that is going to allow you to be flexible?

Because over time that may change.

You may be working on a project and you have the perfect idea who it's for, and then you run into somebody else and you're like, no, actually this is for this person over here that I didn't know like two weeks ago, and I'm creating this and it's for them.

So I need to change a few things up.

So align those goals with your why you want to use purpose driven goals that are feeling lightable, lighter and more sustainable and lightable too.

But the these purpose driven goals, not these hard deadlines and not point A to point B, straight line kind of stuff.

But why we're doing it and who is it for that's going to feel lighter and you'll be able to do it more often?

I think that's one thing that we're all trying to do.

When you're feeling burnt out and when doubt is creeping in, go back to your why.

Why are you doing this?

Is it to cause change in the world?

Is it to make a living?

I don't know.

But whatever your why is, revisit that and that will be your North Star to guide you to where you need to go.

Now we're going to go to the fourth point, which is projecting, protecting, not projecting.

Protect the joy of play.

Here's the thing.

You want to set up a no pressure, creative space for yourself.

Maybe it's a sketchbook.

Maybe you have a keyboard that you just pounded on.

You do a word vomit or a word salad and you just, this is stuff that nobody's ever gonna see.

I mean, look behind me.

For those of you that are listening only to the audio, I'm Sorry.

If you're watching the video, I've got some stuff that is just.

Just for fun.

Just like, I wanted to do this and see what happened.

And I've talked about some of my pieces that I've done before.

So my collage, which I don't know what I'm doing with the collage, it just looked right to me.

Play around.

There's going to be some stuff that you don't show anybody.

And it's okay.

It's for you.

It's an experiment.

And with that, there's no pressure on you.

You can build your mastery of whatever project that you're doing.

And it reminds you of why you started.

The big thing here is let joy, the joy of creating, be part of your process.

Make it integral, not just, hey, if I sell it for a million dollars at the end.

That's not the goal.

That's not the goal.

You want to have fun with it because it can get frustrating.

It can get very frustrating.

Especially if you hear a lot of crickets and no one's buying your work or asking you about your work.

Work that can get really frustrating after a while.

So just have fun with it.

That's the big thing.

Everybody that I've read that talks about creativity always comes back to the fun of it.

And really creating stuff is a lot of fun.

Even if you're like me and you paint like a four year old on crack, it's fun, I enjoy it.

If people like it, great.

If people don't, that's fine.

But I'm going to keep on doing it because it brings me peace.

That's kind of like watching Bob Ross on pbs.

Just you see how much fun he's having with it.

And you're like, man, I want to do that.

For me, that's what I do with my paintings.

I want to do that.

I want to have fun with it.

If it looks like what he did, great.

But I'm just here for the quiet, soothing nature of it, and that helps me out tremendously.

All right, so this is our last point, and that's build reflection into your routine.

And I'm not saying put a mirror up.

Okay?

You can put a mirror up if you want to.

I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna come and bite your fingers off, but look at what you've done.

My earliest paintings, I don't know where they are.

They're gone.

They're gone.

But I do have some paintings that are a little bit old.

There is one that is just off to the side here.

You can't see it.

It's off camera, but it's a painting of a brick wall, but with different colors and different textures going on with it.

It's fine.

It's great.

I have it up on my wall.

I look at it from time to time, and I'm like, okay, cool.

That's one of my earlier pieces.

For those of you that are watching the video off to the back here, right about.

Yeah, that guy right there.

Basically, it's a big black X with some white and some red around it.

And that's one of my earlier paintings.

I've got some pencil drawings and some color pencil things going on in the background here too.

And so if you're listening to the audio, get on my.

Get on my YouTube page.

And that way you can be in on the joke as well.

But schedule some time to take a look at it.

I do that with my writing.

I do that with my poetry.

Sometimes I look at my earliest stuff, which I actually do have, and I scratch my head and I go, oh, my God, that's horrendous.

But then I look and see what I'm writing now, and I'm like, okay, all right.

There's some progress here.

You know, at that time, I was writing about this kind of stuff.

Now my life has changed so much.

I'm writing about this kind of stuff.

That reflection re energizes you, and it shows you the progress, and you're like, okay, I'm doing better.

And it'll go back into your.

Why are you doing it?

And I'm developing a mastery of this craft, of this art form.

It makes you feel good about yourself.

There's nothing wrong with feeling good about what you're doing.

You can use journaling if you want to journal about what you're doing and saying, hey, I started doing watercolors, which soon will happen, and it looked like mud.

And then two, three, four, five years down the road, you're writing in your journal.

Wow.

I mean, I had 50 people bidding on this piece.

That would be great.

Look how far I've come.

Or I'm doing a show at a gallery because people really enjoy what I'm doing.

You can do that with journaling.

Maybe some voice memos just to capture the insights and to revisit what you have learned in the process.

That's an art form all into itself, and that's an art form that I'm not great at, but I'm working on that, and I am a work in progress.

All right, I need to get back on with my day.

I'm going to let you get back on with your day.

I want to thank you first and foremost for either watching on the YouTube channel or listening to this on your app of choice.

And if today's talk inspired you, I'm going to challenge you.

Take five minutes to write down one creative goal and beside that goal, one way to keep it fun.

That's going to be your compass for your next project.

And just go ahead and do that.

If you want to share with me, you can email me.

Timothy Create art podcast dot com.

Be happy to read those and if you'd like to be on the show or if you have critiques of the show, send it to my email address.

I'd love to hear from you.

Sometimes it gets lonely out here just hearing crickets.

So definitely let me know what you like about the show, what you don't like about the show, what you want to see more of, what you want to see less of.

I'm here to help you be the best artist that you can be.

Share it with a friend.

Maybe you're all good to go with this, but a friend that needs to hear this.

Maybe you don't have the words for it or you can't articulate it like I can articulate it.

Share this episode with them.

I'm not gonna.

It's not gonna hurt my feelings.

Please do.

I totally am for that.

Speaking about sharing this show, I have another show called Find a Podcast about.

You can get it on that one at Find a Podcast about xyz and that's where I help my listeners over there.

Find the next binge worthy podcast and outsmart the algorithm.

Check it out.

And I alluded to this a little bit earlier, but I do.

I have started up my own personal business.

It's called TKB Podcast Studio.

You can find it at tkb podcast studio.com and that's where I help my clients lead through the noise with quiet professionalism.

Help people set up their podcasts.

Check out my portfolio there.

Reach out to me.

Let's see what we can do together.

Be happy to help you out with your podcast ideas.

All right, that's it for this.

This episode.

Just want to let you that want you to go out there and create more than you consume.

Team your inner critic, you don't need it.

Your inner critic is probably the one that's saying, oh, you got to get this done here, there and everywhere.

Throw out the schedule, okay?

Just throw it out and go have fun with your art.

Go out there and make some art for somebody you love yourself.

I'll talk to you next time, Sam.