Goals Are Useless Without A Process to Get there

A music professor created a stir when he suggested students have a business plan. Yet he was (mostly) right.

Years ago, while I was working as an accountant for my university’s School of Music, a minor scandal broke out.

Sorry, nothing salacious. That might be more fun for the rumor mill, but this is a better business lesson.

One of the newer professors had joined the faculty after years of working as a professional jazz musician. Part of his job included the occasional trip to local high schools to recruit students hoping to be the next Louis Armstrong or Marcus Miller. He was supposed to tell them the amazing benefits of the university’s music school and why they should join.

“Hold off on your application,” he was reported to have said to these students. “Honestly, you shouldn’t bother studying music unless you know how you’re going to make money when you graduate.”

Later that week, the murmuring could be heard up and down the faculty wing where my accounting office was located.

“You can’t say that,” several other professors whispered to each other. “The school is a place of learning. We can’t turn a student away because they don’t know how they’re going to turn their art into a career!”

The professor kept his job, but I’m guessing he had to sit through several stern lectures in the dean’s office.

Dream Big…Then Plan

How many 16 and 17 year olds at upper middle class schools really know what work is? They’re worried about dates to the dance and passing grades, not a comprehensive business plan for after college. That’s a lifetime away!

On the other hand, the new professor had a point. We’re told to follow our dreams, to live our passion…but we have to eat, too. We need a place to live, and rent isn’t getting any cheaper.

It’s pretty easy to graduate in something practical and in demand like accounting and get a job without having any sort of plan. But, speaking from experience, being an accountant is rarely the “dream job.”

With creative work, it takes a lot more than that. That professor was right about the need, but maybe wrong about the timing. We probably aren’t screwed if we don’t have a plan before we toss our high school graduation caps…but at some point, we do need one.

An Goal Is Nice, A Process Is Better

We love our end goals. “I’m going to lose x pounds!” “I’m going to set up a six figure business!” And so on.

Remember Stephen Covey’s ever popular The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, with habit #3 being “begin with the end in mind?

Yep, another goal.

Goals can be nice, if done right. They can give you direction…or they can be a remote mountain peak so far away that even a small step in that direction is more discouraging than encouraging.

Instead of goals, that theoretical end point where we’ll be “happy” (yet rarely are when we reach it), we need processes.

We need the actions that we do daily and weekly that take us in the right direction. That list of habits that we need to develop that can lead us to success.

For example, I’ve discovered that I enjoy writing (which would have surprised a younger me). It may not ever replace the other work I do, but it’s something I would like to eventually more fully monetize.

So I’m writing virtually every day, since I know that’s a process to become a successful as a writer. But that, alone, isn’t enough. I need to connect with others, figure out where I can post with a bigger audience, and hone in on the things that others will actually want to read.

Things outside of my comfort zone.

Yes, I have a general goal and a general timeline, but I need to be looking at the daily steps rather than be so focused on that far off horizon that I trip up and give up.

That music professor was right to focus on the difficulty in the music field. Most of the creative world is like that. People see creation and have dreams of doing it themselves.

If that’s you, what steps do you need to take today, tomorrow, this week, and every day to get you there?

Write it down. Get moving.

It’s like Kimmy Schmidt’s mystery crank: You can stand anything for ten seconds!

Similarly, you can do this work a day at a time. Even if where you want to be is way down the line.

Are you in the US working freelance, starting up a side hustle, or working your own independent entrepreneurial venture? Then great news! I have a free, 6 day course covering all the business basics you need to know, from organization to tax! Sign up for it here.