Own goals
Filed in Enjoying photography - December 2, 2007There has been quite a lot about goal setting around on the photo-net recently. It is undoubtedly true that you get more done if you set yourself goals. You don’t have to look hard to find lists upon lists of suggested goals; workshops to help you define your goals; and yet more workshops to help you achieve them. There are products to help you keep track of your goals, and, for all I know, there are workshops to help you select which products you use to keep track of your goals. I don’t know this for sure, but these exist in other walks of life, so why not photography.
What none of the recent outflow of goal oriented writing ever questions is whether having goals is a good thing. That is, whether getting more done is a good thing – although this Dave Beckerman paragraph gets close:
What I’m trying to get at – is that the inspiration can be a motivating force, some fixed idea you’re wedded to that gets you out of bed – or out of the house – but frankly but it isn’t much more than that. Surprise is more productive than inspiration. Being open to chance is everything. Surprises while you are shooting; surprises while you are reviewing, this keeps me going. If you can toss your inspirations and fixed ideas; and just be open to the scene, the moment or whatever is unfolding – that’s when it gets exciting. And easier said than done.
I’d like to raise a small flag for the idea of not having goals. I’m not saying that having goals are bad, and I fully understand that some people thrive on them, but I am saying that before you follow the recommended goal oriented, ends driven, output focussed, path, it might just be worth standing back and asking yourself why this matters.
An alternative model is to follow your interests of the moment. To do what seems pleasing to you now. To investigate the idea that you’ve just come across, or the thought that you just had, simply because it seems sort of interesting and you are not sure where it will take you.
Because it doesn’t matter.
You and I, dear reader, aren’t going to achieve anything but our own lives. Well, I could qualify that in all sorts of ways, but not to include “taking six pictures that’ll print to 24 inches and sell out a whole limited edition” or any such similar statement.
Over the last couple of days, in between finalising arrangements to move our household close to a hospice, and driving a couple of hundred miles to get to yet another medical appointment, I’ve been mucking around with some heavily post processed ISO 3200 pictures of the garden. The results are probably pretty cheesy (the first was posted on Today, yesterday), and this may turn out to be a dead end, but it is an idea that struck me and I felt like following it. I’ve no idea whether it will go anywhere, but it has been fun and instructive. And no way would I have spent time doing it if I had been focussed on getting my portfolio together, or selling out those limited editions.
‘Fun and instructive’ scores highly in my book.
If I had to use the language of the goal advisors, I would say that my goal is to not have any goals.
(FWIW this attitude of mind always creates difficulty when faced with the inevitable interview question ‘and what do you want to be doing in five year’s time?’. None of the real answers to this question have ever proved suitable – it is a good moment for creativity.)
While I agree on your views about enjoying the moment, I am not entirely sure that not having goals is the best way for everyone. It depends very much on how much of what you starts that actually gets finished. If that is nothing, then it will at some point in life start to get frustrating. Personally, I set very few goals in my life (well, my professional life requires me to set goals, but that’s another story), but from time to time, I take a look back and see what I have started in the past, but not finished. I try to decide what of these activities that will give me greatest pleasure of finishing, and I set goals for them. If I have a period where I finish work without articulating any explicit goals, I don’t have to think of any goals. I get my reward of finished work quite natural.
But the kind of goals I think you are talking about is more what I associate with business, not art or hobby. If you do art, and a business to sell your art, which I think is two separate things, then these kind of goals my help you get dinner on the table.
December 2, 2007 @ 12:23 pm
Kjell,
I absolutely agree that not having goals is not the way to go for everybody, or even for anybody all of the time. I am simply doing what I said – which is to raise the flag for the alternative idea from that often promulgated.
As for earning money, then unless one is in the extraordinarily fortunate postion of being paid for what you would do anyway then goal setting is an invariable part of the deal. As a busy professional I accepted that what I was being paid for was (substantially) to set targets and meet them.
December 2, 2007 @ 12:53 pm
Raise that flag a bit higher, Colin. I’ll be one to salute it. I haven’t read the posts to which you refer, but I can imagine. I’ve read enough of that motivational material to know what it sounds like. My general feeling about it is that people take themselves too damn seriously, myselves included. We could all benefit from some kidlike behavior in following our whims.
“You and I, dear reader, aren’t going to achieve anything but our own lives.”
We’ve been on about this before, and I still think it’s a good thing to remind people. As I say, in a sing-songy voice that’s a quote from bad teevee “MadTV,” I try to have “lowered expectations.”
The professionalization of pretty much all hobbies is probably a part of the commercialization of life. Whatever the fun activity might be, there is somebody determined to sell us professional grade gear to help us do it better and more efficiently.
“Back off, Jack.” I’ve ascended my little peak of mediocrity, and it looks pretty good from up here. I don’t think I need any more widgets – at least this week – to help me have more fun than I’m already having, thank you.
December 2, 2007 @ 3:11 pm
I like have a project or a goal. It keeps giving me a place to start. It doesn’t mean that other things can’t be considered but it is a reason to gather up the equipment and get out the door.
December 2, 2007 @ 4:21 pm
Having goals or well-defined projects can be helpful, especially when you “hit a bump in the road” and need to restart yourself. I do appreciate setting some goals for myself for the year and reviewing what I’ve accomplished in the past year, but I don’t rigidly adhere to the goals.
As I see it, the biggest problem with goals is fanatically following them, to the ignorance of anything else that happens.
December 2, 2007 @ 6:08 pm
Like Kent, Colin I will salute that flag. I have the feeling that you are talking about the intangibiles of life that you have to grope with for a while before you know what they are and they just aren’t amenable to a formula designed for a business school.
December 2, 2007 @ 7:19 pm
Amen. Sometimes I want to take photographs, and sometimes (more often, in fact), I want to watch TV or waste my leisure time in some other, less productive fashion that also isn’t covered in “101 habits of successful people”. This is a hobby (or possibly an affliction), not my day job – and I’d never want to swap the two either.
December 2, 2007 @ 10:15 pm
Colin, add another person to salute the flag! I shoot, well, because I like to! :-) Plain and simple. If I have a goal, I guess that it would be to share as much of the beauty that I see with whomever I meet and to hang and give away as many prints as possible, not for fame, but for sharing!
Everything need not have a goal. My photography is completely goal-less and I enjoy it immensely.
You mentioned the interview question of what do you want to do 5 years from now. I can only answer: Enjoying my life even more than I do now. I don’t want a career! :-)
Great post and thoughts!
December 3, 2007 @ 3:05 pm
Colin-
For some reason, maybe the accompanying discussion of mortality and personal goals, that is one of the more emotionally affecting images that I’ve seen on the site. Not just “mucking around”.
If visual art is primarily non-verbal communication, then wouldn’t it make sense that the path and it’s goals are also often non-verbal and not expressed as explicit verbal goals? Doesn’t it seem that we may get to a place by what seems consciously like “mucking around” while the right brain is actively considering and pursuing its goals?
December 3, 2007 @ 6:25 pm
James,
The ‘mucking around’ comment was more aimed at the process than the intent. I was clearly doing something deliberate when I took and then processed that photo (and it’s near neighbours) – but the distinction I was making was that it hadn’t been on any to-do list and I couldn’t (still can’t) tell you what project or goal it was in aid of. It is the simplistic, target setting, type of goal advocate that I was reacting to.
I could write about what I was doing in terms of ‘achieving something’ in words that, from the brief CV that you have included on your blog, I guess you would understand. However, ‘understand life’, ‘understand beauty’, or even the simpler ‘understand representation’, are not the sort of things that the target setters have in mind.
December 3, 2007 @ 8:04 pm
Colin, it is so kind of you to offer those of us who have wandered aimlessly through life without goals to have a flagbearer!! I have always thought there was something WRONG with me for not having or ever wanting goals. You point out what to me is the best part of life without goals–it is serendipitous!
December 9, 2007 @ 1:09 pm
Tennessean,
One minor part of this is that so much of photography is about serendipity. It amuses me to see people set goals about how often serendipity is going to happen in the next twelve months.
Even outside of my specific interest in photography, it can only really be considered serendipitous if somebody else likes/appreciates/admires ones artwork.
December 9, 2007 @ 1:47 pm
But do you pursue your art ONLY for others’ sake??? I do it cause I love it–kind of like that admonition about collecting stuff–don’t collect stuff you think is going to be valuable, collect stuff you love. Same holds true for my art. If I like it, that’s all that counts. If others admire it, all the better, but it’s not gonna change what I do.
December 10, 2007 @ 1:38 pm
Tennessean,
Ah, no, an ambiguous sentence. Try:
Another form of serendipty is when somebody else likes something that you produce. If you are truly doing something because you want to rather than the expected impact upon others then the fact that somebody else likes it is a serendipitous bonus.
December 10, 2007 @ 3:04 pm
Yeah, that’s it! BTW, I could well relate to your remark about the standard interview question, “where do you want to be in 5 years?”…During a morning interview, I don’t even know where I want to eat lunch, let alone where I want to be in 5 years :))
December 11, 2007 @ 12:05 am