How to reach your Art Goals 2022 🎨 Illustration Organization

3x Yearly Projects

First, what are your 3 big goals for this year? Yes, THREE big ones maximum, you can have just one or two, but three is our maximum. Otherwise, you’ll spread yourself too thin and end up with nothing. Believe me, three is already a lot of work, as we will see when clarifying the next steps.

So, my three focuses for 2022 are:

1) Publish volume 2 of my manga Illustrated Fairytales, also called IllusFairy

2) Develop my clothing brand Himesama Clothing

3) Monetize my YouTube channel

These projects will be your non-negotiables on which you will focus all your energy, and according to which you will organize your schedule. Yes, you may have commissions, an online shop or other things to manage in between, but most of your time will be focused on developing those three.

Take on projects that truly motivate you, where time flies because you love them and believe in them so much – the more motivated you are, the more likely you are to succeed.

And now that those three projects are defined, let’s move on to the next step!

Deadlines & Important Dates

Once you have your three projects in place, take a calendar and note whether there are important dates, such as preparing your first stock of illustration goodies for a specific convention, or whether it’s a larger project with no limits, like improving your drawing skills. Some people will be more motivated by a deadline, and I also believe having numbers actually helps you measure your progress in a more concrete way.

For me, the big dates for IllusFairy are April second, opening of the crowdfunding pre-orders on Ulule, sending the book to the printer on the first week of June at latest, so that I can receive the book at the beginning of July for summer conventions sales.

For the second project, Himesama, there’s a big new collection planned around August-September, and YouTube stays ongoing in the background all year long.

You might realize at this point that some projects have a higher priority than others, and obviously the workload will be distributed differently, or some projects won’t even run at the same time. As much as we’d love to be everywhere, it won’t help us achieve any goals, so try to stay focused on what truly matters!

3x Trimestrial Goals

This is where we start to make our dreams more measurable with more specific goals! Actually, three months is a lot of time… and also, it goes by quite quickly. But it’s definitely enough time to work on a goal and make it happen. So, what are your three focuses for each of your three big projects? Again, three big ideas maximum, get to the point, and remember you don’t need to advance on everything at once.

For example, my three focuses for the first quarter concerning IllusFairy are:

1) Finish all the sketches + at least three-quarters of the inking

2) Finish all the colour illustrations

3) Do the complete setup of the Ulule crowdfunding page

In the second quarter, the manga is divided into :

1) Marketing

2) Finalizing the book

3) Distribution.

I’m consciously putting a very minimal focus on these two because from experience, I know it’s absolutely unrealistic to be in the middle of drawing and launching a two hundred pages manga, at the same time as launching a clothing collection, for instance. On the other hand, the 3^rd quarter will be almost exclusively reserved for new Himesama releases, and IllusFairy will be totally in the background, just with sales at conventions.

The most important aspect here will be to find a realistic compromise between your projects, and your abilities. Even if you want to do everything right now, and I understand you so much – look objectively at your dates, what is the most urgent, and adjust accordingly.

3x Monthly Goals

Now, let’s continue our plan so that we can slowly but surely take action! Your three quarterly goals can now be subdivided into three monthly focuses, which will make them much more concrete and achievable, and this should definitely start to motivate you to GO for it. It’s up to you whether you plan month by month in chronological order, or in retro planning based on your deadlines.

For a concrete example with IllusFairy:

• January:

1) Complete inking of the chapter The Little Mermaid

2) Complete sketch of the chapter The Wild Swans

3) Complete sketch of all the colour illustrations

• February :

1) Complete colouring of all the illustrations

2) Setup of the campaign page and getting it approved by the website

3) Minimum half of the inking of the Wild Swans

Just for info if you wonder about the titles, Illustrated Fairytales is my manga series based on classical fairy tales.

Anyways, I’m not giving you the next months, but you get the idea – we’re setting more and more achievable and concrete goals, which will slowly but surely lead us to our overall goal. And to be even more certain of achieving them easily – yep, we’re subdividing again!

3x Weekly Goals

Surprise, who would have thought, we continue with weekly goals. Now it’s up to you to see how you best organise yourself within four weeks.

Do you dedicate a whole week to a single project, or do you work on all three at the same time, every single week?

At the moment, for me, it’s looks like that:

• Week 1: sketching all the IllusFairy illustrations / preparing Instagram posts for Himesama
• Week 2: scripting new YouTube videos / filming next month’s videos / sketching half of the Wild Swans
• Week 3: sketch the other half of the Wild Swans / inking the Little Mermaid
• Week 4: inking the Little Mermaid / preparation of Himesama stocks for new conventions

Since I know that these are bigger tasks, especially inking and sketching where you always have days that are more or less productive than others, I limited my weeks with two main goals.

Remember that there will always be random events you didn’t see coming.

You can fall ill, your soulmate surprises you with a romantic weekend trip, a new client asks you for a meeting, and more.

Plan enough to have a nice visible advance, but still plan broad enough just in case.

There’s nothing more demotivating than having a super classy schedule, only to find that you don’t even check half the boxes on your to-do list.

The point is to refine your vision with concrete tasks, to visualise what you can realistically do.

3x Daily Goals

We’re almost there, this is the step that will really get you going with small victories every day. As minor as they may seem, these tasks combined every day, week, month, will have a huge impact and allow you to achieve your big creative goals in the long run.

As an example, I’ll simply take my second week which was scripting videos, filming, and sketching the Wild Swans. Subdivided with three focuses per day maximum, here is my schedule:

• Monday: morning + afternoon annual accountancy 2021 / evening watching a cozy movie while sketching the Wild Swans
• Tuesday: complete day scripting YouTube videos
• Wednesday: morning YouTube videos recording / afternoon sketching the Wild Swans
• Thursday: complete day for client meetings & student workshops
• Friday: morning sketching the Wild Swans / afternoon inking the Little Mermaid

The goal is to keep a maximum of three non-negotiable focuses. But, as you can see, I don’t always stick 100% to the weekly goals defined beforehand, because as we said, there will always be random things that pop up, for instance yearly bookkeeping or meetings.

Knowing your work rhythm is important to better define your tasks.

For instance, I know I procrastinate and get bored to death if I have to do exactly the same task over and over again, so even though it wasn’t the big focus this week, I put in an afternoon of inking to change from sketches. It’s all part of the same project so, we can be more spontaneous sometimes.

Our dreams are important, but it’s just as important to have fun and keep the passion on these projects that we do because we love them, not because they’re an obligation.

And really, if one day you’re not going as planned, if you need to rest, just do it. So yeah, we’re human, we do this job because we love it, and it’s not the end of the world if you change your plans from time to time.

I started using this system six months ago after discovering it in the amazing The Boost business training, and overall it works very well, and has helped me to better target my actions and priorities. Especially if you are part of the hyper creative team with lots of ideas in mind, it should really help you to clarify your priorities and actions. And that being said, now it’s your turn to speak up – what are your three projects that you want to achieve in 2022? 

afterword

For those who are interested, I’ve actually created a printable template that I’ve been using for months now, as a daily planner to move forward on my own goals. With the reopening of my Patreon page, it is now available to all my supporters.

GO FOR YOUR DREAMS! You can do it!

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